Interview
Passionate about Stories and Play – Anna Rafferty
Our guest on the show this week is Anna Rafferty who runs a global team of more than a thousand people at Lego, the company with play at the heart of its DNA.
Based in London, Anna and her large team oversee Lego’s consumer relationships including digital and social engagement, apps, websites, memberships, magazines, community management, digital safety, and events. Phew!
Anna’s had a remarkable career journey starting out of university with early dotcom ‘rocket ship’ Last Minute.com, where she worked for one of our former guests, Martha Lane Fox.
Her career has also seen her work with Penguin Books, the BBC and blockbuster author JK Rowling’s company, Pottermore. To this day she retains her links to the publishing world as Chair of the Women’s Prize for Fiction. Suffice to say, Anna is one busy woman!
In this episode you’ll hear how:
- She had a career epiphany at 23 years of age
- What working for author JK Rowling was like
- How one question helped her deal with overwhelm; and
- The 3 behaviours that Lego values most in its leaders.
Anna’s worked with some truly amazing brands and organisations in her career to date so we think you’ll love hearing more about her impressive journey. Enjoy this episode with the passionate and playful Anna Rafferty.
Links
Anna’s current top ‘Must read’ books:
Books recommended by Anna in her own words:
In no particular order:
Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe – the original mistress of reinvention and the cat who had nine lives.
Warrior Queens and Quiet Revolutionaries by Kate Mosse – an encyclopaedia of incredible women from history who you should know but probably don’t.
The Power by Naomi Alderman – winner of the 2017 Women’s Prize for Fiction, presenting an alternative universe in which there’s a new physical dominance in town.
Star of the Sea by Joseph O’Connor – compulsive thriller set in the height of the Irish famine and depicting a true story from the area where my mother is from. Think Titanic crossed with Agatha Christie crossed with Dickens.
Trespasses – Louise Kennedy – Waterstones calls it “A blistering account of encroaching violence and fractured loyalties in 1970’s Belfast” and I couldn’t put it better except to add that it’s darkly funny and full of love of all kinds – romantic, maternal, fraternal, platonic. So good
The Book of Form and Emptiness by Zen Buddhist priest Ruth Ozeki – The perfect summer read, so original and funny and sweet and loving and clever and magical and sad – a must-read!
The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker – absolutely compulsive, beautiful and horrifying retelling of the siege of Troy.
Life after Life by Kate Atkinson – like nothing else ever and will blow your minds.
Auntie Mame by Patrick Dennis – my go-to funny comfort read.
As a bonus – I would add that, honestly, every book long listed for the Women’s Prize for Fiction every year is excellent; from Circe to Hamnet to Piranesi to Salt Lick and so on. I am biased but please let me offer this gift to you: read these books.
Finally here’s our interview with Martha Lane Fox, Co-Founder of Lastminute.com, the first company Anna worked for.
