Lyndy Cooke

She is a well renowned and highly experienced events producer, programmer, curator and a freelance international consultant for arts and cultural organisations such as the National Trust, British Council, Arts Councils in UK and Ireland, Commonwealth Foundation, Lloyd’s Register Foundation, Queens Park Book Festival, Jaipur Literature Festival in India, York Festival of Ideas, Ubud
Writers & Readers Festival in Bali.

Lyndy is most well-known for her 20 years of being the Managing Director of Hay Festival; taking the company from a turnover of £40K to c.£3.8M, and establishing 8 international satellite festivals across 5 continents.

Lyndy is the senior project manager for Richie Turner Associates, in addition to leading on all financial management consultancy tasks (she loves a good spreadsheet!) During COVID Lyndy setup a packpony business, but spends most of her time running her own events consultancy businesses – Hand Held Events – which she she co-founded in 2017.