Helen Boaden (born 1 March 1956) is a British former broadcasting executive who spent more than 30 years working for the BBC, including as Director of Radio between February 2013 and September 2016.Tom Harpe
"BBC news head Helen Boaden moved to radio as ex-minister becomes strategy chief"
''

London Evening Standard The ''Evening Standard'', formerly ''The Standard'' (1827–1904), also known as the ''London Evening Standard'', is a local free daily newspaper in London, England, published Monday to Friday in tabloid format. In October 2009, after be ...

'', 14 February 2013 Boaden is a Fellow of The

Radio Academy The Radio Academy is a registered charity dedicated to "the encouragement, recognition and promotion of excellence in UK broadcasting and audio production". It was formed in 1983 and is run via a board of trustees, with a chair and a deputy chair ...

,The Radio Academ
"Fellows"
and in May 2019 she joined the

board Board or Boards may refer to: Flat surface * Lumber, or other rigid material, milled or sawn flat ** Plank (wood) ** Cutting board ** Sounding board, of a musical instrument * Cardboard (paper product) * Paperboard * Fiberboard ** Hardboard, a ty ...

of the UK Statistics Authority for a period of three years.

Early life

Boaden was born on 1 March 1956 in

Colchester Colchester ( ) is a city in Essex, in the East of England. It had a population of 122,000 in 2011. The demonym is Colcestrian. Colchester occupies the site of Camulodunum, the first major city in Roman Britain and its first capital. Colch ...

Essex Essex () is a Ceremonial counties of England, county in the East of England. One of the home counties, it borders Suffolk and Cambridgeshire to the north, the North Sea to the east, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent across the estuary of the Riv ...

. Her father was an FE lecturer in geography and then worked for a teaching union. She says that she came "from one of those families where there was quite a lot of shouting and plates whizzing through the air".My Best Teacher - Interview with Helen Boaden
Publisher: ''

Times Educational Supplement ''Tes'', formerly known as the ''Times Educational Supplement'', is a weekly UK publication aimed at education professionals. It was first published in 1910 as a pull-out supplement in ''The Times'' newspaper. Such was its popularity that in 19 ...

''. Published 20 April 2001. Updated 11 May 2008. Retrieved 30 January 2013. Boaden says that she found school "a great relief from home life because it was calm and ordered". She was educated at Rushmere junior school and Northgate Grammar School (now Northgate High School) in the large

county town In the United Kingdom and Ireland, a county town is the most important town or city in a county. It is usually the location of administrative or judicial functions within a county and the place where the county's members of Parliament are elect ...

Ipswich Ipswich () is a port town and borough in Suffolk, England, of which it is the county town. The town is located in East Anglia about away from the mouth of the River Orwell and the North Sea. Ipswich is both on the Great Eastern Main Line ...

Suffolk Suffolk () is a ceremonial county of England in East Anglia. It borders Norfolk to the north, Cambridgeshire to the west and Essex to the south; the North Sea lies to the east. The county town is Ipswich; other important towns include ...

, and at Cedars Grammar School (now

Cedars Upper School Cedars Upper School is an upper school and sixth form with academy status, located in Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire, England. Former students of the school are known as Old Cedarians. History Following the Fisher Education Act in 1918, educ ...

) in the town of

Leighton Buzzard Leighton Buzzard ( ) is a market town in Bedfordshire, England, in the southwest of the county and close to the Buckinghamshire border. It lies between Aylesbury, Tring, Luton/Dunstable and Milton Keynes, near the Chiltern Hills. It is northwe ...

Bedfordshire Bedfordshire (; abbreviated Beds) is a ceremonial county in the East of England. The county has been administered by three unitary authorities, Borough of Bedford, Central Bedfordshire and Borough of Luton, since Bedfordshire County Council ...

, followed by the

University of Sussex , mottoeng = Be Still and Know , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £14.4 million (2020) , budget = £319.6 million (2019–20) , chancellor = Sanjeev Bhaskar , vice_chancellor = Sasha Roseneil , ...

, where she gained a BA Honours in English literature, and the

Wharton School The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania ( ; also known as Wharton Business School, the Wharton School, Penn Wharton, and Wharton) is the business school of the University of Pennsylvania, a private Ivy League research university in ...

of the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...

in 1999, where she gained an MBA.Helen Boaden
Publisher: ''The Media Briefing.Com''. Retrieved 30 January 2013.

Life and career

Boaden began her career in 1978 as a care assistant with disturbed adolescents in the London Borough of Hackney. The following year, she became a journalist with the New York City radio station

WBAI WBAI (99.5 FM) is a non-commercial, listener-supported radio station licensed to New York, New York. Its programming is a mixture of political news, talk and opinion from a left-leaning, liberal or progressive viewpoint, and eclectic music. ...

. On returning to the UK, she took a course in radio journalism at the London College of Printing (now the

London College of Communication The London College of Communication is a constituent college of the University of the Arts London. It specialises in media-related subjects including advertising, animation, film, graphic design, photography and sound arts. It has approximately ...

). After work at Radio Tees and Radio Aire, Boaden joined the BBC in 1983 as a news producer with

Radio Leeds BBC Radio Leeds is the BBC's local radio station serving the county of West Yorkshire. It broadcasts on FM, DAB, digital TV and via BBC Sounds from studios at St Peter's Square in Leeds. According to RAJAR, the station has a weekly audienc ...

. From there, she joined

BBC Radio 4 BBC Radio 4 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC that replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. It broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history from the BBC' ...

as a reporter on the ''

File on 4 ''File on 4'' is a current-affairs radio programme produced by BBC News and broadcast on BBC Radio 4. First broadcast from Manchester in 1977, it is produced in Salford by the BBC's Radio Current Affairs department. It has won more than forty aw ...

'' series, then as its editor from 1991. She worked from the BBC in

Manchester Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The t ...

as a presenter for ''

Woman's Hour ''Woman's Hour'' is a radio magazine programme broadcast in the United Kingdom on the BBC Light Programme, BBC Radio 2, and later BBC Radio 4. It has been on the air since 1946. History Created by Norman Collins and originally presented by ...

'' and later presented other documentaries for Radio 4, and for the ''Brass Tacks'' political programme on BBC 2. In 1997, Boaden became the BBC's Head of Business Programmes, then in 1998 Head of BBC Current Affairs – the first woman to hold this position. She was Controller of

from March 2000 until 20 September 2004, superseded by

Mark Damazer Mark David Damazer, CBE (born 15 April 1955), is a former Master of St Peter's College, Oxford, and a former controller of BBC Radio 4 and BBC Radio 7 in the United Kingdom. Early life and education Damazer was born on 15 April 1955. He is th ...

. She became Controller of BBC7 in 2002, when the station was launched. In 2004, she succeeded Richard Sambrook as Director of

BBC News BBC News is an operational business division of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) responsible for the gathering and broadcasting of news and current affairs in the UK and around the world. The department is the world's largest broad ...

. Boaden received criticism following the 7 July terror attacks in London when she issued a memo instructing BBC staff not to refer to the perpetrators as

terrorists Terrorism, in its broadest sense, is the use of criminal violence to provoke a state of terror or fear, mostly with the intention to achieve political or religious aims. The term is used in this regard primarily to refer to intentional violen ...

, arguing that the term "can be a barrier rather than aid to understanding". Former BBC reporter

Martin Bell Martin Bell, (born 31 August 1938) is a British UNICEF (UNICEF UK) Ambassador, a former broadcast war reporter and former independent politician who became the Member of Parliament (MP) for Tatton from 1997 to 2001. He is sometimes known as " ...

was one of those who condemned the memo, accusing the BBC of being "overcautious" and noting that the attackers seemed to meet the definition of terrorists. Writing in ''

The Spectator ''The Spectator'' is a weekly British magazine on politics, culture, and current affairs. It was first published in July 1828, making it the oldest surviving weekly magazine in the world. It is owned by Frederick Barclay, who also owns ''The ...

'', Michael Vestey suggested "it's almost as if the BBC is afraid of offending suicide bombers in the Muslim world". In December 2012, Boaden was asked to temporarily step down from her position as the Director of BBC News while the BBC awaited the results of Operation Yewtree, a wide-ranging police investigation of sexual abuse, primarily of children, by former BBC presenter Jimmy Savile (who died in 2011) and others. A second and parallel investigation, launched by the BBC into possible management failings at the corporation, called the 'Pollard Report' after the lead investigator,

Nick Pollard George Nicholas Pollard (born 15 November 1950) is a British journalist and the former head of Sky News. Early life and education Pollard was born in Birkenhead and educated at Birkenhead School, an independent school in the town. Career in jo ...

(a former senior executive at Sky News), criticised the BBC and several executive members for continuing with plans to celebrate Savile's life, despite apparently having received advance information that Savile was being investigated for multiple cases of sexual abuse. The report explicitly criticised Boaden for having handled the matter too casually. Boaden returned to her position later the same month. In February 2013, Boaden was appointed director of radio by incoming director-general Tony Hall. This was widely seen as a demotion. After a period with

Fran Unsworth Francesca Mary Unsworth (born 29 December 1957) is a British journalist and media executive. Since January 2018 she has been Director, News & Current Affairs for BBC News. She was appointed in succession to James Harding. Before then she ser ...

in her former post, James Harding became Director of BBC News later in 2013. Boaden resigned from the BBC in September 2016. She is a Fellow of The

. In May 2019, she joined the board of the UK Statistics Authority for a period of three years.

Awards

Boaden has won

Sony Awards The Radio Academy Awards, started in 1983, were the most prestigious awards in the British radio industry. For most of their existence, they were run by ZAFER Associates, but in latter years were brought under the control of The Radio Academy ...

for a programme on AIDS in

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...

, and bullying in Feltham Young Offenders Institution when at ''

''. Radio 4 won the Gold Award for Station of the Year in 2003 and 2004. In 1990, Boaden won awards from the Industrial Society for her work on safety standards in the

oil industry The petroleum industry, also known as the oil industry or the oil patch, includes the global processes of exploration, extraction, refining, transportation (often by oil tankers and pipelines), and marketing of petroleum products. The larges ...

. She has honorary degrees from Suffolk College, the

, and the University of York. She is on the committee of the Sony Radio Academy. In February 2013, she was assessed as one of the 100 most powerful women in the United Kingdom b
Woman's Hour
o
BBC Radio 4

Personal life

Boaden is married and owns a home in

Scarborough Scarborough or Scarboro may refer to: People * Scarborough (surname) * Earl of Scarbrough Places Australia * Scarborough, Western Australia, suburb of Perth * Scarborough, New South Wales, suburb of Wollongong * Scarborough, Queensland, su ...

. Her husband is a newspaper journalist.

References

External links

BBC Press Office biography

BBC News blog

Receiving Doctor of Letters from University of Sussex on 18 July 2003

* ttps://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007qlvb/features/power-list-100 BBC Radio 4 Woman's Hour Powerlist 2013 {{DEFAULTSORT:Boaden, Helen 1956 births Living people Alumni of the University of Sussex BBC executives BBC News people BBC Radio 4 BBC Radio 4 controllers British radio executives Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania alumni Alumni of the London College of Communication People from Colchester People educated at Northgate Grammar School, Ipswich