Jake Attwell - Managing Director and Co-Founder

Jake is an executive producer with over 20 years of experience as a show-runner. His career in TV started way back in 1994 and has spanned light entertainment, reality, factual entertainment, comedy entertainment and features.

Before co-founding Appeal he was Commissioning Editor for entertainment and reality at MTV, where he looked after shows including Geordie Shore, Ex on The Beach and Just Tattoo Of Us.

Jake is responsible for all of Appeal’s reality output and development.

Iain Thompson - Co-Founder

‘Thompy’ is an award winning Director and Executive Producer, renowned for working with big name talent. He has recently been Executive Producer and Director on all series of DNA Journey for ITV1.

Other credits include Ewan McGregor’s Cold Chain Mission, Gary Barlow’s Journey to Afghanistan, Last laugh in Vegas and I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here!  He is also one of the pioneers of TV shows like Soccer Aid for Unicef and Red Nose Day USA.

Richard Curtis described his work as “game changing” and he was awarded an Honorary Fellowship by UNICEF in recognition of his work in this area.

Kelly Sparks - Executive Producer

Kelly has worked on a huge variety of shows across Factual Entertainment and Entertainment for the major UK networks. Most recently Kelly has been Executive Producer on all Mary Berry’s cooking shows for the BBC, as well as looking after the talent-led travelogue Anton and Gio’s Adventures in Spain, also for the BBC.  

Kelly was Executive Producer on Junior Doctors, an observational documentary series for BBC2 and has also acted as development lead on major Factual Entertainment projects for the BBC.

Prior to this Kelly worked as a Director on a range of Entertainment shows including ITV1’s Ant and Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway, Surprise Surprise and Family Fortunes, and is fully trained as a Multi-Camera Studio director by Directors UK.

Susi Hollins - Head of Production and Operations

Susi joined Appeal from Production Executive roles at Optomen TV and Vice Studios, and was previously Head of Production at Lola Entertainment. She has worked in production across a broad range of programming, including entertainment, reality, comedy, hidden camera, factual and documentary. Career highlights have included "John Bishop's Britain" for BBC, "Derren Brown: Apocalypse" for Channel 4 and "Football Icon" for Sky.

Susi is responsible for overseeing the management of all Appeal TV and Appeal Films productions from development through to delivery, including oversight of finance, business affairs and company operations.