Jane McCloskey.
Four decades at the top of British broadcasting — now helping people navigate their most difficult moments.
Jane McCloskey is a British media executive, writer, business consultant and leadership coach whose career spans more than four decades at the very top of UK broadcasting. Having held senior leadership roles at both ITV and the BBC, she now works as a crisis and leadership coach, with a consultancy that helps businesses across the UK and internationally navigate risk, reputation and change. Behind a characteristically modest manner lies one of the most accomplished and versatile track records in the industry — as a programme-maker, a transformational leader, and a trusted adviser to those facing their most difficult moments.
Jane’s talent announced itself early. At just seventeen she wrote a script for HTV’s acclaimed network children’s drama Into the Labyrinth, before joining the BBC and rising rapidly through the ranks as studio director, assistant producer and producer on a string of network programmes, from Daytime Live and The Travel Show to Election Night Special. By 1994 she had been appointed GMTV’s Head of Features and Entertainment, and in 1995, at just twenty-nine, she became ITV’s youngest-ever Director of Programmes. Her flair for programming and live event television earned Westcountry a prestigious Royal Television Society award in 1997 for Christmas With the Royal Navy, judged the best live television event of the year.
As her career progressed, Jane established herself as a formidable business leader as well as a creative one. She headed ITV’s £3 million annual Regional Production Fund, championing new talent and content from production companies outside London, and went on to become Managing Director of both ITV West and ITV Westcountry — steering a complex and demanding business-change programme to merge the two regions. Returning to the BBC in 2009, she held a succession of senior roles including Head of Regional and Local Programmes and Director of Organisational Change, and was co-opted into the corporation’s transformation team to deliver large-scale savings under the Delivering Quality First initiative. As Controller of Strategic Partnerships and Sustainability, she brokered landmark public-value partnerships with the Arts Council, the BFI and the British Council, and founded the pioneering digital arts channel The Space as a joint venture between the BBC and Arts Council England.
Alongside her executive career Jane has sustained a remarkable record of public service, holding trustee and non-executive roles on fourteen boards since 1997 — among them the first independent board member of IOSH, the Chartered Institute of Safety and Health, Chair of National Dance Company Wales, and roles with Marwell Wildlife, The Prince’s Trust, the Royal Devon & Exeter Hospital Trust and the University of Plymouth, where she served as an independent governor.
Today Jane runs her own coaching and consultancy business, working extensively as a crisis coach with high-profile clients facing reputational challenges, and supporting organisations to manage risk and change with calm, clarity and hard-won judgement. A dedicated meditator with a deep interest in food and a personal library of more than 500 cookbooks, she brings to her work the same qualities that have distinguished her whole career: creativity, resilience, and an instinctive understanding of people. Few can match her combination of front-line broadcasting experience, boardroom leadership and genuine human insight — and fewer still wear it so lightly.