Dawn Elizabeth Airey (born 15 November 1960) is a British media executive, sports administrator and independent company director. She is the Chancellor of

Edge Hill University Edge Hill University is a campus-based public university in Ormskirk, Lancashire, England. The university, which originally opened in 1885 as Edge Hill College, was the first non-denominational teacher training college for women in England, befo ...

, and chairs the

Barclays Barclays PLC (, occasionally ) is a British multinational universal bank, headquartered in London, England. Barclays operates as two divisions, Barclays UK and Barclays International, supported by a service company, Barclays Execution Services ...

FA Women's Super League The Women's Super League (WSL), also known as the Barclays Women's Super League for sponsorship reasons, and formerly the FA WSL, is a professional association football league and the highest level of women's football in England. Currently oper ...

and

Championship In sport, a championship is a competition in which the aim is to decide which individual or team is the champion. Championship systems Various forms of competition can be referred to by the term championship. Title match system In this sys ...

board, the

National Youth Theatre The National Youth Theatre of Great Britain (NYT) is a youth theatre and charity in London, created with the aim of developing young people's artistic skills via theatrical productions and other creative endeavours. Founded in 1956 as the world ...

and the educational platform Digital Theatre+. Airey is a non-executive director of

Channel 4 Channel 4 is a British free-to-air public broadcast television channel owned and operated by Channel Four Television Corporation. It is state-owned enterprise, publicly owned but, unlike the BBC, it receives no public funding and is funded en ...

Getty Images Getty Images Holdings, Inc. (stylized as gettyimages) is a visual media company and supplier of stock images, editorial photography, video, and music for business and consumers, with a library of over 477 million assets. It targets three mark ...

, Grosvenor Estates and Blackbird. She is best known for her tenure between 1996 and 2002 at Channel 5, as the inaugural Director of Programmes, and subsequently Chief Executive, and has held senior positions at

ITV plc ITV plc is a British media company that holds 13 of the 15 regional television licences that make up the ITV (TV network), ITV network (Channel 3), the oldest and largest commercial terrestrial television network in the United Kingdom. ITV plc ...

Sky UK Sky UK Limited (formerly British Sky Broadcasting Limited (BSkyB)), Trade name, trading as Sky, is a British broadcasting, broadcaster and telecommunications company that provides television, broadband internet, fixed line and mobile telephone ...

Yahoo! Yahoo (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web portal that provides the search engine Yahoo Search and related services including My Yahoo, Yahoo Mail, Yahoo News, Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Sports, y!entertainment, yahoo!life, and its a ...

and

Early life

Airey was born in

Preston, Lancashire Preston () is a city on the north bank of the River Ribble in Lancashire, England. The city is the administrative centre of the county of Lancashire and the wider City of Preston, Lancashire, City of Preston local government district. Preston ...

. She was educated at

Girton College, Cambridge Girton College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. The college was established in 1869 by Emily Davies and Barbara Bodichon as the first women's college at Cambridge. In 1948, it was granted full college status by the un ...

, where she studied geography.

Career

Airey began her career as a management trainee at

Central Independent Television ITV Central, previously known as Central Independent Television, Carlton Central, ITV1 for Central England and commonly referred to as simply Central, is the ITV (TV network), Independent Television franchisee in Midlands, the English Midlands ...

in 1985. In 1989 she was promoted to the position of Director of Programme Planning and was appointed to the Central broadcasting board. When the ITV Network Centre was established in 1993, she moved to London to become the combined network's first Controller of Children's and Daytime Programmes. In 1994, she was appointed Controller of Arts and Entertainment at

, where it was reported http://625.uk.com/channel5/ ''The Sunday Times'', (30 March 1997) that her forthright manner had earned her the soubriquets "Scary Airey" and "Zulu Dawn" and her commitment to popularism was deemed by one colleague as "vulgar". Airey joined Channel 5 in 1996, the year ahead of its launch, as the first director of programmes. It was during her tenure that she agreed with an interviewer's description of the channel's core strengths as "films, football and f***ing" but added that it was about much more. She was subsequently appointed as chief executive of the channel in 2000. In 2002, amid rumours that

was reportedly pursuing her to become its chief executive., Airey surprised the television industry by instead accepting a position at the satellite broadcaster,

BSkyB Sky UK Limited (formerly British Sky Broadcasting Limited (BSkyB)), trading as Sky, is a British broadcaster and telecommunications company that provides television, broadband internet, fixed line and mobile telephone services to consumers ...

. overseeing all non-sports channels, their programming and all advertising sales. In 2006, she became Sky's managing director of Channels and Services with added responsibility for third party channels, joint ventures and networked media. Airey departed BSkyB to head up an independent production business backed by private investors however she was only with the company for a total of eight days before it was announced that the venture did not have sufficient cash to continue trading. Soon after, in May 2007, she was reunited with

Michael Grade Michael Ian Grade, Baron Grade of Yarmouth (born 8 March 1943) is an English Media proprietor, television executive and businessman. He has held a number of senior roles in television, including controller of BBC1 (1984–1986), chief executive ...

, joining

as Director of Global Content, running the broadcaster's production and global sales division. But within a matter of months she had again been poached by Channel 5 to become chairman and CEO, with a remit to increase profitability and audience share. This she did. RTL's decision to exit UK broadcasting and sell the company to

Richard Desmond Richard Clive Desmond (born 8 December 1951) is a British publisher, businessman, and former Pornography, pornographer. According to the 2021 ''Sunday Times Rich List'', Desmond was the 107th richest person in the United Kingdom. He is the fo ...

Northern & Shell Northern & Shell (holding company name Northern and Shell Network Ltd) is a British publishing group, founded in December 1974 and owned since then by Richard Desmond. Formerly a publisher of pornographic magazines including '' Penthouse'' and '' ...

saw her elevated to the role of President of RTL-owned

CLT-UFA RTL Group S.A. ("Radio Télévision Luxembourg") is a Luxembourg-based international media conglomerate, with another corporate office in Cologne, Germany. The company operates 56 television channels and 36 radio stations in Germany, France an ...

., where she served between 2010 and 2013. In August 2013, she joined

as senior vice-president of Yahoo EMEA (Europe, the Middle East and Africa). She was in the post until September 2015. Airey was

chief executive officer A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a chief executive or managing director, is the top-ranking corporate officer charged with the management of an organization, usually a company or a nonprofit organization. CEOs find roles in variou ...

(CEO) of

photo agency from October 2015 to 31 December 2018, at which time she became a non-executive director member of its board. In March 2023 Airey was appointed Chancellor of

Football

In 2019,

The Football Association The Football Association (the FA) is the Sports governing body, governing body of association football in England and the Crown Dependencies of Jersey, Bailiwick of Guernsey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man. Formed in 1863, it is the oldest footb ...

appointed Airey as chair of the new joint Barclays FA Women's Super League and Championship board. The 12-strong board, including six women, was established by the FA as part of its commitment to growing the women's game. It was during Airey's tenure that the FA agreed a landmark three-year broadcast deal with the BBC and Sky that delivered more access to live women's football than ever before. In 2021, she also served as a member of the Government's Expert Panel for a Fan-Led Review of Football Governance, led by the former Sports Minister

Tracey Crouch Dame Tracey Elizabeth Anne Crouch (born 24 July 1975) is a British Conservative Party politician who served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Chatham and Aylesford from 2010 to 2024. Crouch was appointed as Minister for Sport, Civil Soc ...

. The review called for the creation of an independent regulator for the game, alongside greater powers for supporters and an improved "owners and director's test" for those seeking to control local clubs.

Directorships

Airey chairs the joint Barclays FA Women's Super League and Championship board (2019-) and the boards of the

(2011-) and the educational platform Digital Theatre+ (2019-). She is a non-Executive Director of Channel 4 (2021-), cloud video platform

Blackbird (software) Blackbird (formerly named FORscene) is an integrated internet video platform, video editing software, covering non-linear editing and publishing for broadcast, web and mobile. Designed by Blackbird plc to allow collaborative editing of video ...

(2019-), Grosvenor Estates (2019-) and Getty Images (2015-). Previously she has held positions on the boards of

UK Film Council The UK Film Council (UKFC) was a non-departmental public body set up in 2000 to develop and promote the film industry in the UK. It was constituted as a private company limited by guarantee, owned by the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and ...

, the

British Library The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom. Based in London, it is one of the largest libraries in the world, with an estimated collection of between 170 and 200 million items from multiple countries. As a legal deposit li ...

easyJet EasyJet plc (styled as easyJet) is a British multinational low-cost airline group headquartered at London Luton Airport. It operates domestic and international scheduled services on 927 routes in more than 34 countries via its affiliate airlin ...

Thomas Cook Thomas Cook (22 November 1808 – 18 July 1892) was the founder of the travel agency Thomas Cook & Son. He was born into a poor family in Derbyshire and left school at the age of ten to start work as a gardener's boy. He served an appren ...

and

LoveFilm LoveFilm was a United Kingdom–based provider of DVD-by-mail and streaming video on demand in the United Kingdom, Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Germany. Acquired by Amazon.com in 2011, the service had reached 2 million subscribers. It claimed o ...

Honours

Airey is a Fellow and a Vice President of the

Royal Television Society The Royal Television Society (RTS) is a British-based educational charity for the discussion, and analysis of television in all its forms, past, present, and future. It is the oldest television society in the world. It currently has fourteen r ...

and a Fellow of the

Royal Society of Arts The Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, commonly known as the Royal Society of Arts (RSA), is a learned society that champions innovation and progress across a multitude of sectors by fostering creativity, s ...

. In 2017, she was News International's visiting professor of

Media Studies Media studies is a discipline and field of study that deals with the content, history, and effects of various media; in particular, the mass media. Media studies may draw on traditions from both the social sciences and the humanities, but it mos ...

Brasenose College Brasenose College (BNC) is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. It began as Brasenose Hall in the 13th century, before being founded as a college in 1509. The library and chapel were added in the m ...

Oxford University The University of Oxford is a collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the second-oldest continuously operating u ...

and in 2018 was given an Honorary Doctorate of Arts by

for her outstanding contributions to the media industry. She holds a degree from the

University of Cambridge The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209, the University of Cambridge is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation, wo ...

. In the

2024 Birthday Honours The 2024 King's Birthday Honours are appointments by some of the 15 Commonwealth realms of Charles III, King Charles III to Orders and decorations of the Commonwealth realms, various orders and honours to reward and highlight good works by citizens ...

, Dawn Airey was appointed a Commander of the

Order of the British Empire The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding valuable service in a wide range of useful activities. It comprises five classes of awards across both civil and military divisions, the most senior two o ...

(CBE) for services to theatre and to charity.

Personal life

Airey lives with her civil partner Jacqueline Lawrence (Founder and Chair of The Elma Trust, a non-profit organisation) in West London and Oxford. The couple have two daughters. She describes herself as a monarchist and a supporter of “the modern royal family”, singling out the work ethic and "phenomenal" dedication to the arts of

Prince Edward, Duke of Edinburgh Prince Edward, Duke of Edinburgh (Edward Antony Richard Louis; born 10 March 1964) is a member of the British royal family. He is the youngest child of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, and the youngest sibling of King ...

, royal patron of the

, of which Airey is chair. Her views stand in contrast to her position of two decades ago when she told ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...

'' that the concept of the monarchy had become “anachronistic”.

References

External links

Her articles at the ''Guardian''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Airey, Dawn 1960 births Living people Alumni of Girton College, Cambridge British women chief executives English television executives Women television executives Channel 5 (British TV channel) People educated at Kelly College Mass media people from Preston, Lancashire English LGBTQ businesspeople National Youth Theatre members 21st-century English LGBTQ people British republicans Commanders of the Order of the British Empire