Margaret Pinder
Host
Margaret studied English and Modern Languages at King’s College, Cambridge where she was heavily involved in the music scene playing co-principal double bass in the university music society’s first orchestra. She was a contemporary of a number of notable performers and composers including George Benjamin, Joanna MacGregor (with whom she performed in “The Threepenny Opera”), Gerald Finley and Mark Padmore.
She went on to qualify as a solicitor, practising international shipping law in the City and then moving the United States where she specialised in international corporate law on Wall Street. After moving to the Boston area with her family, she joined the faculty of Harvard University where she won two awards for excellence in teaching from the Derek Bok Institute for Education.
Returning to the UK she worked as a writer and translator (she has published three children’s and YA books) as well as serving as academic director at a prestigious summer school at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford.
Margaret also has enjoyed a successful career as a consultant in public sector construction and procurement acting as partnering adviser and project manager on a number of large infrastructure projects for the Ministry of Justice and several major councils across the country.
More recently she worked as Head of Market Intelligence for a major international law firm advising on policy and strategy as well as editing several newsletters for their marine, trade and energy business group.
In 2017 she was selected to join a small, but diverse cohort of business people from across the country on the CBI’s Executive Leadership Programme which took her to into the heart of government and policy making in Westminster, Brussels and Washington.
Margaret continues to play the double bass, sitting as section principal in the Hull Philharmonic Orchestra, for which she also serves as an executive committee member. She is involved in various other local music societies and festivals including Hull Chamber Music.
She currently serves as a local councillor and was Town Mayor of Beverley in 2012/13. She uses her position to promote the arts, especially music education for young people.
When she is not playing music to relax, Margaret is making a name for herself on the stand-up comedy circuit and has appeared in London and New York as well at venues across the North of England. She is winner of the Rising Stars Comedy Club Audience Award.
Margaret speaks fluent German as well as being competent in a number of other languages (including Indonesian).