London Area, United Kingdom
• Top level private industry and public broadcast executive – Editor-in-chief at independent global ICT giant Huawei & ex-BBC news board director/programme executive. • International media, corporate communications expert – strategic leader, news specialist, storyteller, presenter, interviewer and multimedia format creator. • Thought leader, crisis communications and C-suite strategic adviser. • Multi-million pound budget oversight, talent developer and leader of up to 1500+ high performance staff. • Comprehensive experience of driving modernisation, innovation, efficiency and change management. • Trust and reputation narrative management, CSR campaign development, strategic promotion of highly sensitive brand. • Highly connected across tech, media, news and political and opinion-forming worlds. • Global events host and speaker: Mobile World Congress, Mobile Broadband Forum, Operations Transformation Forum, corporate Annual Report and Analyst Summits.
COMPANY OVERVIEW: Operating across 170 countries and employing over 207,000 people, Huawei is a global provider of information and communications technology (ICT) infrastructure, smart devices, services and solutions. RESPONSIBILITIES & ACHIEVEMENTS: * Leading the strategy to boost public awareness/recognition of the local and global value Huawei brings to businesses and communities across the world. * Strategic crisis communications management and advice. * Corporate event host, interviewer and original format content creator. * Launching, leading and presenting a global, multi-media thought leadership series. * Relaunching and tripling traffic to the company's corporate news site. * Multiple company award-winner for outstanding leadership and project management.
COMPANY OVERVIEW: The world's largest broadcast news and current affairs organisation. RESPONSIBILITIES & ACHIEVEMENTS: * BBC News Board member, determining division-wide future strategy direction, clear-sighted leadership of multi-million pound project groups. * Day-to-day strategic, editorial, financial and managerial leadership of key global and domestic TV and radio news programmes (all Radio 4, TV 6/10, World News and UK News Channels, TV Breakfast, World Service, 5 Live etc), up to 1500 staff and £140m budget. Fostering new content, reinforcing brand reputations and driving efficiencies. * Drove creative innovation: a key developer of an interactive Voice News service; of the multi-platform "assertive impartiality" experimental style of storytelling; and of the now industry-wide 50/50 gender equality project. Also overhauled diversity of my leadership team, more than tripling representation of women at senior leader level. * Led the news teams through acute financial, staffing and logistical pressures created by the Covid pandemic, delivering award-winning quality journalism to record audiences. * Delivered £13m (12%) financial savings and 132 EFT (12%) headcount reduction in two years, without incurring industrial action and whilst improving output impact. * Represented BBC News in external interviews, and as chair of the EBU Radio & Audio News committee and Trustee of the NCTJ and UK Science Media Centre.
RESPONSIBILITIES & ACHIEVEMENTS: * Determined, drove and coordinated the daily news agenda on behalf of the entirety of BBC News, leading allocation of appropriate staffing and resources on the most important running stories. * Established and shaped this newly created role, reporting to the Director of News, and recruited/trained new team to ensure daily newsroom leadership. * Directed investigations into key news stories, marshalling and coordinating collective expertise across news and current affairs departments.
RESPONSIBILITIES & ACHIEVEMENTS: * Led the BBC’s 40+ political news gathering team across TV, Radio and Online, driving the editorial agenda and liaising with politicians/party HQs. * Guided programme output on stories to cover, and treatments. * Core member of overall news strategy team. * Managed selection procedures, redundancies, appeals and tribunals.