Jo Fairley

Jo Fairley founded the pioneering organic chocolate company Green & Black’s. which has now gone on to be ‘bigger than Marmite’ (in sales terms) and ‘cooler than Prada’ (Coolbrands 2007/2008); in the Coolbrands Survey 2009, Green & Black’s was the only food brand in the top 20.

Despite selling the brand to Cadbury’s, Jo remains an ambassador for the company and in 2008 she wrote Sweet Dreams: The Story of Green & Black’s.

Jo now runs Judges Bakery – an organic one-stop shop – and The Wellington Centre, an 11-room ‘boutique’ wellbeing centre, in her home town of Hastings. She continues to juggle this with her writing career: although she left school at 16, by the age of 23 Jo was the youngest-ever magazine editor in the UK, editing first Look Now and then Honey Magazine. She is a Contributing Editor to the Mail on Sunday’s YOU Magazine, as well as to a very wide range of publications including the new National Geographic Green. In May 2014 Jo launched The Perfume Society (www.perfumesociety.org), turning a life-long passion into a website which embraces the world’s first appreciation society for fragrance-lovers.

She is the co-author (with Sarah Stacey) of the bestselling Beauty Bible series of books, the world’s bestselling beauty books, including: The Beauty Bible, Feel Fab Forever: The Anti-Ageing Health & Beauty Bible, The 21st Century Beauty Bible, The Handbag Beauty Bible and most recently The Green Beauty Bible, which combines her ‘green’ expertise with her insights into the beauty world. She is also author of The Ultimate Natural Beauty Book.

For eight years Jo chaired the Soil Association’s Health Products Standards Committee, helping to set the standards for organic and natural bodycare in the UK. She is a ‘matron’ of the Women’s Environmental Network, runs makeover workshops for young women at Centrepoint and sits on the Human Rights Watch Film Festival committee.