Simon Melaniphy

Having founded, grown and sold a successful digital marketing agency, Simon is now Group Operations Director at the £43m Emerge Group and studying part time for an MBA at Southampton University.

Refreshed Media, the full service digital agency, was founded in 2003 and grew to 25 staff and £2m turnover. Client list included Comet, Cunard & RM.

Simon’s role as MD focused on both new business as well as operations, which included HR/recruitment, finance and legal. In the company’s early days Simon was burning the midnight oil with hands-on SEO, PPC, web design & PHP coding.

Simon’s love of the web started during his Computer Science/Software Engineering degree at Birmingham University. This varied degree included economics and marketing components, and was a solid progression from his ‘A’ grades in A-level & GCSE Business Studies. This all helped to give a deep understanding of how business ideas can be implemented through web technologies.

Simon has been a Princes Trust mentor (getting to meet Prince Charles at The Palace!), spoken at a number of entrepreneurial events at local Universities, and is a committee member for digital networking group “Meetdraw”.

In previous years, Simon’s passion for music led to A&R and Licensing for a Sydney based record label - he licensed & mixed an album selling 15,000 copies - and a successful club and radio DJ career with audiences of up to 100,000 on-air in Australia.

Outside of work (apart from the many hours spent on his MBA!) he has a beautiful wife and enjoys live comedy, photography, bodyboarding and cycling, though no plans to repeat the London to Paris cycle ride just yet!