BBC Senior Leadership Development Programme participants announced

The scheme, in association with the Clore Leadership Programme, is a key element of plans designed to ensure the BBC represents all communities in modern Britain and the aim is to encourage those selected to consider and apply for careers as senior leaders in the broadcast industry.

The six BAME Senior Leadership Programme participants, and their backgrounds, are:

• Tim Pemberton, Managing Editor of BBC Radio Bristol
• Serra Tezisler, former HR Business Partner for Ricoh
• Nelson Abbey, who has extensive experience in the financial sector and is a columnist for The Voice newspaper
• Dr Rob Berkeley, former Director of the Runnymede Trust
• Marcelle Moncrieffe-Johnson, BBC Head of HR Support
• Ade Adeluwoye, former Head of Brand for Coca-Cola at marketing agency Zone

The successful candidates, chosen from more than 300 applicants, have a proven track record in leading teams and projects in a variety of organisations and will undertake a 12-month training programme alongside one of the BBC’s board members, including Director-General Tony Hall and James Purnell, Director of Strategy and Digital.

As well as being involved in the running of the BBC at the highest level they will also be trained by the Clore Leadership Programme, the UK’s pioneering leadership development initiative for the cultural and creative sectors. It has also been announced today that Nelson Abbey and Ade Adeluwoye will receive Clore Fellowships while the other four scheme participants will attend Clore residential leadership courses.

Tony Hall, BBC Director-General, says: “‘I’m excited about this partnership and the difference it’s going to make. For the first time, we’re bringing together the world of broadcasting, with arts and culture, to inspire new ideas - and new leaders. I wish our first fellows, and all our successful candidates, every success.”

Sue Hoyle, Director of the Clore Leadership Programme, says: “The Clore Leadership Programme shares the BBC’s commitment to developing the broadest possible range of talent and enabling people to reach their absolute potential as leaders. We’ve been hugely impressed by the quality of the applicants and the diverse range of experiences they bring with them. I’m excited about the exchange of ideas across the cultural and broadcasting sectors, and the contributions that the BBC participants will make to the programme. We look forward to working with them and to developing our partnership with the BBC.”

All six recently took up their placements right at the very top of the BBC, alongside Director-General Tony Hall and Executive Board members.

They will join more than 20 emerging leaders from BAME backgrounds at the BBC for a development and networking event at New Broadcasting House today hosted by the BBC and the Clore Leadership Programme.

The delegates will hear from Tony Hall, Sue Hoyle and Joe Godwin, Director BBC Academy. There will also be keynotes from Farooq Chaudhry, Producer at Akram Khan Dance and Clore Fellow Kully Thiarai, Artistic Director of CAST, Doncaster. There will also be several group learning sessions.

Today’s announcement follows the recruitment of six ‘Commissioners of the Future’ in February 2015. They will be embedded in entertainment, comedy, factual, daytime, children’s programming and across BBC Two and BBC Four for a 12-month traineeship as part of the Assistant Commissioner Development Programme.

Notes to Editors

Full profiles of participants

Tim Pemberton
Tim has been a Managing Editor at the BBC for over 12 years. He began his BBC career as a production trainee at BBC Pebble Mill in the West Midlands, before working as a producer at BBC Radio Wales and Senior Producer in Religion & Ethics in Manchester. His most recent role has been as the Managing Editor of BBC Radio Bristol, where he led a team of 40 staff and actively promoted diversity in output and off-air. The station won the Gillard bronze award for Station of the year in 2011 and the Gillard gold award in 2009 for ‘My Bristol’. Tim was previously the Station Manager at BBC Radio Shropshire and editor of BBC 2002 the Commonwealth Games radio station.

Nelson Abbey
Nelson Abbey has worked in the business sector since 2005 and most recently was the Head of Regulatory Compliance (Europe excluding Jersey, Middle East and US) at Ashburton. He started his career as an Executive at PriceWaterhouseCoopers before joining Insight Investment as a Risk Adviser in November 2007 for two years. In March 2010 he spent six months working as a Regulatory Consultant at ICAP before joining BlackRock as an Institutional Sales and Portfolio Management Advisory Associate.
Nelson is also a freelance journalist and columnist and has written a fortnightly column for The Voice newspaper since 2010.

Dr Rob Berkeley
Rob was Director of race equality think tank the Runnymede Trust between January 2009 and February 2014, and Deputy Director between 2005 and 2009. His doctoral studies at the University of Oxford focused on exclusion from school. He was awarded an MBE for services to equality in 2015 New Year Honours List. He is currently a trustee of the Baring Foundation and governor of a South London Pupil Referral Unit as well as being Managing Editor of Black Out UK magazine.

He has previously been Chair of governors at a South London primary school, Chair of Naz Project London, a Trustee of Stonewall, and a member of the Commission on 2020 Public Services and a trustee of the Equality and Diversity Forum. Rob has also worked as the Executive Chair at the Black Gay Men’s Advisory Group, Assistant Policy Adviser for the General Teaching Council for England, Chair at Oxford Access Scheme and Co-ordinator for the Oxford Access Scheme.

Marcelle Moncrieffe-Johnson
Marcelle has been the Head of HR (Support at Work) at the BBC since November 2013, where she led on the BBC’s response to the Respect at Work and Granger reports and also leads the Support at Work Service. Previously she was interim Head of HR at ARK Schools, where she was responsible for HR, learning development and recruitment, as well as heading up a team of 30 staff. Marcelle worked at the London Borough of Brent for just under six years progressing to Head of People Services and Deputy HR Director leading a team of 50 staff. Prior to this Marcelle was Head of Human Resources and Organisational Development at Harrow Primary Care Trust and has worked as International HR Manager for British Airways and Change Manager at Transport for London. Marcelle is currently studying for a Doctorate in Business Administration with the Edinburgh Business School. For her Doctorate Marcelle is focusing on change management, which entails conducting research to understand how organisations successfully achieve transformational and sustainable change.

Ade Adeluwoye
Ade Adeluwoye was Head of Brand of the Coca-Cola portfolio at advertsing agency Zone, where he oversaw the digital marketing strategy in the UK for the Coca-Cola GB portfolio. He has a ten year track record of leading the strategic development of high profile brands. Ade began his career as a Schedule Manager at ITV in February 1997 before moving to Universal Music Group International as their Head of Consumer Insight in June 1999. He joined the BBC as Head of Strategic Projects in July 2006 before working at BBC Radio 1, 1Xtra and BBC 5Live as Audience lead for four years. Between January 2011 and August 2012 he was the Lead Senior Planner at the BBC for the London Olympics.

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Founded in 2003 by the Clore Duffield Foundation, the Clore Leadership Programme is an initiative to develop and strengthen leadership across cultural and creative sectors in the UK. The Programme awards its flagship Clore Fellowships, and runs a choice of programmes tailored to leadership needs of arts professionals at different stages of their career from emerging to established cultural leaders. In the last 11 years, over 275 Fellowships have been awarded and over 1,100 leaders have attended the Clore’s intense residential courses. For more information see: www.cloreleadership.org

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Tony Hall announced his action plan to tackle the under representation of people from BAME backgrounds in June 2014. In addition to today’s announcement on the Senior Leadership Development Programme and the recruitment for the Assistant Commissioner Development Programme the following progress has been made:

Encouraging new talent
The BBC announced that it would be taking on 20 BAME graduate trainee interns from the successful Creative Access Programme, a charity that finds training placements in the media industry for high potential BAME graduates. There are now 30 Creative Access Trainees working across the BBC.

Commissioning
A new £2.1m Diversity Creative Talent Fund was announced to help address the specific challenge around BAME portrayal in BBC programmes. It will support the development of ideas across all genres. BAME writers, talent and production staff will be encouraged to get involved. This money has been re-prioritised from other budgets and came on stream on 1 September. It will help fast-track great ideas and projects onto screen.

Independent challenge and advice
A small group of respected experts have joined an Independent Diversity Action Group, chaired by the Director-General. The panel comprises Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson; Lenny Henry CBE, actor and writer; Nihal, Asian Network presenter; Tanya Motie, former BBC One and BBC Three channel executive; Daniel Oudkerk QC, barrister; George Mpanga, writer and performer; Jason Roberts MBE, former footballer; Baroness Floella Benjamin OBE, actress, presenter, and broadcaster.

The BBC is also an active member of the pan industry Creative Diversity Network (CDN) and is working on a number of joint projects that will have impact across broadcasting. Later this month BBC News is opening up its newsrooms as part of the CDN Open Room events, in which all the major news broadcasters give taster days to young people from broad range of backgrounds. The BBC is also collaborating with a CDN monitoring pilot that aims to deliver consistent and comparable data about on and off air talent across the industry, scheduled for 2015, and is exploring the possibility of more commissioning placements with all the major broadcasters.

On and off-air representation

On-air
In the next three years our aspiration is to see on-air BAME portrayal increase from 10.4 percent to 15 percent.

Off-air
The BBC already has a series of aspirational targets for staff representation that it aims to achieve by 2017. In addition, the BBC has announced that it hopes to increase its BAME senior level staff (grade 10-SM1) in the most relevant areas of TV and Radio Production, Broadcast Journalism and Commissioning and Scheduling from 8.3 percent currently, to 10 percent by 2017 and then to 15 percent by 2020. BBC News has also reviewed its figures and hopes to achieve changes at a level in London, Birmingham, Manchester and Leicester to reflect the population.

BAME group representation in the leadership grades is 8.7 percent. The target for leadership grade BAME staff to be reached by 2017 is 10 percent.

12.6 percent BAME Staff compared to an industry average of 5.4 percent. The target for BAME staff to be reached by 2017 is 14.2 percent. 

BBC Press Office

Related Media Centre Links

• New BBC schemes encourage BAME talent to join senior leadership of broadcast industry