Gwen Watkins

Gwen is the principal member of the Freelancers Writing Services CC consultancy, founded in 1991 from a 1988 partnership. She has been a news writer since 1981, when she joined Thompson Publications as editor of Plastics & Rubber News.

She has completed her Practitioner and Master Practitioner NLP course under the auspices of the Society of Neuro-Linguistic Programming, Southern Institute in Florida USA. She holds various diplomas and certificates in public relations, marketing and sales. She was the first woman in South Africa to obtain a Certificate in Plastics Technology and amongst the first to be made a Fellow of the Plastics Institute of Southern Africa.

In 2004, Gwen completed the Coaching Genius training through the International Society of Neuro-Semantics and X-Sim - Managing by Project through X-Pert Training Academy.

Gwen has considerable experience in lecturing and running workshops both locally and internationally - handled by the division www.skywalkers.co.za

Gwen recently passed the Convention Industry Council's (CIC) international exam and is now a Certified Meeting Professional (CMP).

Gwen is a member of the Marketing Association of South Africa (MASA), Women in Finance (WIF) and SAACI (Southern African Association for the Conference Industry).

As part of her firm's social responsibility programme, Gwen assists emerging small companies with their marketing needs and has participated in three mentoring programmes - NBI/McKinsey, Raiscorp and Umsobomvu. Her article entitled ’Promoting your company’ - a guide to writing press releases for SMEs is published by SEDA http://www.seda.org.za/content.asp?subID=762