Georgina Wilson-Powell has been a magazine editor for 16 years, she has a slight obsession with setting up magazines and brands and flying by the seat of her spotted (now organic bamboo) pants. Her previous roles include Associate Publisher in Dubai responsible for BBC Good Food and Lonely Planet Traveller magazines; an exclusive blogger for BBC Travel and managing many Time Out travel guides. She set up her first magazine aged 21 focusing on music and street art magazine back when street art was called graffiti.
Georgina is also the founder of pebble magazine, a fast growing destination for a stylish, sustainable life with a passionate audience. They are all about supporting businesses that have developed fairer ways of trading and making choices that lighten the load of your life on the planet. In their words: “What we’d really like is just to say we’re a magazine about living a good life full of adventures and for all this talk of eco this and ethical that not be needed any more, because it’s just the way we all do things.”
The more we talk about how things are made and champion the people doing things differently, the more our expectations across the board rise
In this episode, there is a lot of laughter and fun! We discuss the following:
- Georgina’s background growing up in the countryside, seaside, and in big cities (~01:29)
- How Georgina got into the media industry, including starting her own magazine at 21 and working all over the world for various big name publications like the BBC and Lonely Planet (~02:15)
- How her working lifestyle of travelling around the world inspired Georgina to write about and talk about sustainability stories (~03:20)
- How pebble magazine came to be (~04:35)
- An overview of pebble magazine and what you can find there (~05:45)
- pebble events including upcoming Christmas event, pebblefest (~7:00)
- pebble pod community on Facebook and how it’s a great place to talk to and lear from like-minded people (~9:00)
- The story behind the name ‘pebble’ (~10:20)
- Thoughts on pebble’s intent to normalise ‘eco’ (~12:20)
- Thoughts on making sustainability more accessible (~15:30)
- Being blown away by the number of amazing business popping up that are championing sustainability (~17:15)
- Thoughts on recommending consumption and consumerism when as a solution, there is a strong argument against consumption (~18:15)
- Men in the debate (~23:30)
- Mission for pebble mag 5 years from now (~25:30)
- Role of media in bringing about change (~27:30)
- How the sustainability movement has evolved (~29:20)
- What’s keeping Georgina up at night and what’s giving her hope (~32:15)
- Innovations Georgina is excited about, especially in sustainable fashion (~35:35)
- Exciting things coming up for pebble and Georgina (~38:20)
- Advice for those wanting to get out there and make change using media as a platform (~40:30)
- Key message for everyone on the planet (~42:10)