Dotti Irving has been lucky enough to spend her working life in culture and particularly in the world of books. After an exhilarating decade at Penguin, she set up Colman Getty, a PR agency which specialised in publishing and campaigning, and where she worked with such inspirational writers as Nigella and J.K.Rowling and oversaw a number of ground-breaking campaigns like Opportunity 2000, an initiative designed to promote equal opportunities in the workplace. Dotti is possibly best known for handling such big-ticket prizes as the Booker Prize for Fiction and the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-fiction (now the Baillie Gifford Prize). In 2012 Dotti sold her company to Four, a larger communications agency, and in July 2022 she stepped down to pursue her independent portfolio career.
An Honours graduate from Edinburgh University, Dotti is a long-term member of the Groucho Club and a trustee of the Deborah Rogers Foundation which supports emerging talent in the literary world. She is also one of just 12 people, and the only woman, to have featured in every Bookseller Top 150 – the annual ranking of the most influential people in the British book trade – since it was launched in 2009.