Bio

Founder and Director of The WOW Foundation. Co-Founder of Smart Purse. Inspiring speaker. Artistic Director of the Robert F Kennedy Festival of Human Rights. Former Artistic Director, South Bank Centre. Theatre Director and Producer. Currently Visiting Fellow at The Marshall Institute, LSE. CBE. OBE. Knight of Denmark (for services to culture, gender and sustainability). Keynote speaker and convenor for organisations including WOW, WACL and M&C Saatchi. The public face of the WOW Festival; speaker for TedTalks, Newsnight, Question Time, Desert Island Discs and BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour speaker. Arts consultant. Represented Britain at UNESCO. I am a board member of the Cultural Industries Federation, The Performance Theatre, and the Patron of the Mary Wollstonecraft Programme. I am on the advisory council of the Global Institute for Women's Leadership. I have also been a judge for the Women’s Prize for fiction, and chaired the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction. I chair the METAL Culture board. I am on the Pathfinder International Presidents' Council. Please contact me for NED directorships and charity board memberships. Directed over 200 theatre and opera productions, including for the RSC, National Theatre and ENO. Recipient of two Olivier Awards for theatre, a BASCA Gold Badge Award winner for contribution to music, a Southbank Award for opera work, an RPO award for the festival The Rest is Noise. Former visiting Professor (Kingston University; Shanghai; Hong Kong). Honorary Fellow of RIBA, former Sterling Prize Judge. Founder Battersea Arts Centre, the Leeds Playhouse and the international artists and community spaces METAL which are local catalysts for place-based change in Liverpool, Peterborough and Southend on Sea. Cultural Olympiad board member. Windsurfer.