Pirouette power — Greta Thomas leaps gracefully from ballet to Bono

Curveball

The crowd is spilling out of a Bob Geldof event, but one wily ex-reporter has tapped into her performing arts know-how to get backstage. Armed with nothing but a business card and a tiny handwritten message, she’s trying to get her name to rockstar Bono and his new venture, PRODUCT (RED).

It might sound ludicrous. And it kind of was. Greta Thomas was a marketing professional in Sydney, Australia. She had no connection to U2’s frontman Bono and she didn’t know anyone working on his PRODUCT (RED) campaign. But when Greta’s determined to make something happen, she doesn’t take the first no. “You don’t even take the tenth no. If you’re really passionate about something, there’s more than one way to get from A to B.”

And the winding path is her speciality. A trained ballet dancer, Greta Thomas didn’t finish high school or take on under-graduate studies at university. And yet her career has taken her from dance, to journalism and PR, to marketing roles at eBay and the Sydney Opera House, and now to a role advising and mentoring innovation companies with her company Full Potential Labs.

Greta and her business partner Claire Hatton host the podcast Don’t Stop Us Now.

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This was episode was produced and edited by Liam Riordan with sound design by Justin Rouillon. The executive producers are Rachel Fountain and Kellie Riordan.

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