People

Mary is Master-Elect/Master of Trinity Hall, Cambridge. She left the BBC after a long career in News. In 2021 she was Director of BBC World Service, overseeing more than forty language services. For several years she was Controller BBC World Service English, looking after the BBC’s radio and digital audio services in English for audiences around the world, growing the audience and developing a wide range of award-winning programmes and podcasts. Her previous role was as Head of the BBC Newsroom, overseeing the BBC’s flagship daily television and radio news bulletins and the BBC news website. She held various other roles in the BBC. She lived in Prague in the early 1990s as a correspondent for the BBC and The Independent and is the author of Kafka, Love and Courage - a biography of Milena Jesenska. She studied English at Cambridge and then Journalism at New York University on a Fulbright Scholarship.

Mary is a Lay Trustee with the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, an independent NED with the ICAEW and a Board Member with a small social enterprise, Climate Alliance.  

Appointed on 1 September 2022. First 4-year term expires on 31 August 2026.