DAME PAULINE NEVILLE-JONES

Governor of the BBC
United Kingdom

Dame Pauline Neville-Jones has been a BBC Governor since January 1998. Her term of office has been extended to end in 2005. She chairs the BBC’s Audit Committee and the Governors’ World Service Consultative Group.

Born on 2 November 1939, she was educated at Leeds Girls' High School and Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford (Modern History). She was a Harkness Fellow of the Commonwealth Fund in the USA from 1961 to 1963.

Pauline Neville-Jones was a career member of the Diplomatic Service from 1963 to 1996 during which time she served in British Missions in Rhodesia, Singapore, Washington and Bonn. Between 1977 and 1982 she was seconded to the European Commission where she worked as Deputy and then Chef de Cabinet to the Budget and Financial Institutions Commissioner, Christopher Tugendhat.

From 1991 to 1994 she was Deputy Secretary to the Cabinet Office and between 1993 and 1994 was Head of Defence and Overseas Secretariat of the Joint Intelligence Committee. From 1994 until her retirement, she was Political Director in the Foreign Commonwealth Office, in which capacity she led the British delegation to the Dayton negotiations on the Bosnia peace settlement.

From 1996 to 1998 she was Managing Director and Head of Global Business Strategy for NatWest Markets and Chairman of NatWest Markets France. She was Vice Chairman of Hawkpoint Partners Ltd., the corporate advisory arm of NatWest Bank plc. from 1998 to 2000. She is Chairman of Qinetiq Group plc. and of the Information Assurance Advisory Council.

She is an Honorary Fellow of Lady Margaret Hall and Doctor of the London Universities and Open University. She was made a companion of the Order of St. Michael and St. George in 1987 and a Dame Commander in the 1996 New Year's Honours.