Catherine McCarthy
Catherine has had a long-standing and immensely rewarding career at senior leadership level in public service broadcasting and digital health, including 25 years’ at the BBC in senior commissioning, broadcast channel management, editorial and creative leadership roles. She has worked on many of the BBC’s most successful, impactful, and award-winning television projects and social action campaigns, and led teams all over the world to deliver prime time multiplatform campaigns, reaching audiences of millions. She has developed strategy, created new TV channels, and successfully led multimedia projects which have transformed the lives of audiences in the poorest countries of the world.
In addition she has over 9 years’ experience as a CEO leading an innovative Non-Profit, using media and communications to create lifesaving digital health, reaching communities most disadvantaged and most in need globally. She led the organisation through major periods of change and transformation, developing new strategy and creating major partnerships with global leaders, institutions, and technology companies, winning many awards for achievements in innovation, creativity, production, and research.
Since her early experience as a VSO volunteer teacher, working in the most remote Islands of the world, she has been driven by a commitment to address societal issues – whether it has been through using prime-time media and social action campaigns to start impactful learning journeys, or by driving change to address health inequalities through digital media. Her work has always focused on those most in need, seeking to empower disadvantaged and underrepresented communities by harnessing the power of media and communications for good, in learning, health, and international development.
She is originally a trainer teacher, and has been a mentor for Documentary Campus, a global project to develop new talent in film-making, an Advisory Member to the European Broadcasting Union, a Governor at the Evelina School in St Thomas’s Hospital and an Adviser to Sheffield Documentary Film Festival and Global Health Films initiative. Catherine served on the steering group of the initial Nominet Trust’s 100 most innovative social tech projects worldwide.