The Trustees of BBC Children in Need are legally responsible for the charity. They make the final decisions on grant applications and take legal responsibility for grant-making.

James Fairclough is a portfolio Angel investor and advisor to disruptive start-up and scale-up businesses and their Founders. He is Non-Executive Chair of Kindred, Furthr and Settlement Agreement Solicitors. Between 2018 and 2023 he was CEO of AA Financial Services and AA Cars.

James studied Geography at St. John’s College, Oxford before embarking on a marketing led general management career, starting at Procter & Gamble. He has since worked in leadership roles at Capital Radio, Virgin Media, Inchcape, Simply Business, Sky, IWG and the AA.

In addition to his work as Trustee at Children in Need, he has also been a trustee of Leukaemia UK since 2018.

James joined the board of Trustees in 2021 and Chairs a Commercial Advisory Group, which helps to identify and create new opportunities for commercial partnerships. 

Cherrie has 25 years of service in the charity sector in several charities across Wales as an Executive and Board member. For the past 15 years, Cherrie has been Chief Executive Officer for Faith in Families, a Swansea-based organisation which supports thousands of children each year. She served on the BBC Children in Need Wales grant-making committee for eight years, sits on the Board of Children in Wales and the Policy Council and is a member of the Child Poverty Action Group in Wales.

As a Trustee and Chair of BBC Children in Need’s Impact Committee, Cherrie supports the team in developing and delivering the charity’s grant-making strategy, helping to change the lives of children and young people across the UK. Cherrie is passionate about amplifying the truth of the stories of children who live in adversity, knowing that childhood happens just once in a lifetime and can never be relived, and that everyone should have an equitable opportunity to live their best lives despite any challenges they face.

Cherrie grew up on the Gower coast of Swansea where she still lives with her rescue dog. She has a passion for all things outdoors, values kindness and courage, and is the mother of three grown-ups who all adore Pudsey Bear.

Trevor Bradley is an experienced investment management executive. From 2005 to 2018 he was a partner and member of the Management Board at Ruffer LLP.  He was responsible for growing and leading the firm’s institutional investment business, and managed portfolios for pension funds, charities and other institutions.  Prior to Ruffer, Trevor was a strategy consultant at McKinsey & Company, and a UK equity portfolio manager at Mercury Asset Management.

He studied at Queens’ College, Cambridge, where he gained first class honours in Natural Sciences. He has been a member of the BBC Children in Need Investment Committee since 2015 and is a director of Aberdeen Diversified Income and Growth Trust plc.

Randel Bryan is Executive Director and Deputy Chief Executive at Factory International; the landmark cultural space in the heart of Manchester.

Randel leads the Commercial, Development and Fundraising teams in maximising income and investment to financially support Factory International’s programme and social value endeavours. He also oversees the work of The Factory Academy, which provides skills and training opportunities to enable more people to enjoy careers in the arts and creative industries–helping to build the new generations of technicians, producers and other creative talent, primarily targeted at local people who traditionally face economic and cultural barriers to employment in the creative industries. In addition, he leads the Internal Operations team and manages Factory International’s Environmental Sustainability department.

Through his background in media and technology, Randel Bryan has pioneered commercial, event and content strategies for some of the world’s leading studios. These include Universal Pictures, Endemol Shine and most recently Discovery Education, where he led the Global Partnerships team, delivering world-class social responsibility campaigns for the likes of Nike and Rolls-Royce.

Rhona is Finance Director for BBC Nations, one of the largest divisions within the BBC – delivering local, regional and nations services to millions of people each day across the UK on television, radio and mobile platforms. BBC Nations operate from over 50 locations across all four UK nations, with major bases in Glasgow, Cardiff, Salford, Bristol, Birmingham, London and Belfast. Rhona was previously Finance and Operations Director of the BBC’s Radio & Education division, leading on the finance, business management, change and operations functions across Children’s, Learning, Radio, Music and Arts on all platforms of TV, Radio and Online.  She also led the Corporation’s medium and longer term financial strategy as Head of Corporate Finance, Head of Major Projects and Investments in Journalism Group, and supporting BBC Sport’s rights and negotiations.

Before joining the BBC, Rhona was an Assistant Director in Mergers and Acquisitions. Rhona is a qualified Chartered Accountant and also represents the BBC on a number of external bodies including RAJAR and Radio Player.

Kieran is Director, Distribution & Business Development for the BBC.

He is responsible for the distribution of the BBC’s television channels and radio stations and the syndication of its online services to everyone in the UK. He is also responsible for the BBC’s participation in joint ventures Freeview, YouView, Freesat and Digital UK.

Kieran graduated from St Edmund Hall, Oxford with a degree in Philosophy, Politics & Economics, and has an MBA from INSEAD.

He joined the BBC as Head of Strategy, Future Media & Technology before becoming Controller, Digital Strategy and then Director, Distribution & Business Development. Before the BBC, he was Head of Strategy at Channel 5.

Kieran lives in London with his wife and three children.

Patricia Hidalgo is Director of Children’s & Education at the BBC. She is responsible for developing and implementing creative and editorial strategies for BBC Children’s and BBC Education services across all platforms including BBC’s iPlayer, CBeebies and CBBC, with a focus on the strategic future direction of media consumption and business models, overseeing all the division’s content output including in-house productions, co-productions and acquisitions.

Patricia has a strong industry track record and is behind some of the most successful shows in kids’ TV. During her last six years at Turner she was responsible for the production of the multiple award-winning series The Amazing World Of Gumball, as well as the Emile-awarded and Bafta-nominated The Heroic Adventures Of The Valiant Prince Ivandoe. In 2017 Hidalgo was awarded World Screen’s Global Kids Trendsetter award for her outstanding contribution to the kids’ media industry.

Prior to her role at Turner, Patricia spent 15 years at Disney where she held a number of senior roles in Spain, Italy and the UK.

Kenny is the co-founder and Managing Director at ClearView Research and has been working in the research industry for 7 years. He has extensive experience of leading and conducting research projects having worked on research projects across four continents. This has mainly focused on research into millennials and maximising social impact, and as a result Kenny has travelled across the world to share insights, best practice and research findings in countries such as Belgium, USA, Brazil, Tunisia, Israel, and Hong Kong.

Kenny also brings a range of personal experiences that relate to many of the young people across a number of projects we fund. This will be a great asset to the BBC CiN Board.

He’s also an award-winning author and editor of The Kenny Report series (2012 – 2015) and was selected by Rare Rising Star as the “most outstanding black student in the UK” – selected No. 1 out of the Top Ten Black Students in the UK in 2014. Kenny was awarded a fellowship from The Royal Society of Arts and a Winston Churchill Fellowship exploring campaigns to engage and mobilise young people into civic engagement and social issues.

Kenny was also featured in a TV advert for NBC Universal around the theme of ‘100% character’, he was named by Impact Squared as one of 100 young leaders (under 25) across the globe making a social impact to transform our world and described by Huffington Post UK as a “young rising star making waves in UK politics”.

Suzy is Managing Director, Entertainment and Music, BBC Studios. She is responsible for running the creative, commercial, and operational strategy of the business.  Suzy oversees all new and existing productions in her genre including Strictly Come Dancing, Question of Sport, Later with Jools, Elton John : Uncensored, A Royal Team Talk, Eurovision, Glastonbury, Comic Relief, Sport Relief, Children In Need, Children In Need : Got It Covered and most recently the collaboration of BBC Children in Need and Comic Relief for the hugely successful ‘The Big Night In’.

Prior to joining BBC Studios in 2018, Suzy was Head of Entertainment at Thames. She launched Take Me Out (ITV), co-created and developed its successful spin off show Take Me Out: The Gossip (ITV2) and executive produced all six series. Suzy was responsible for reviving Blankety Blank with David Walliams for ITV in 2016 and also oversaw two series of Rebound (ITV Daytime). She previously executive produced 11 series of All Star Family Fortunes, the sporting series Let’s Get Gold, game show Bang On The Money and the music special The ABBA Christmas Party, all for ITV.  Suzy was instrumental in launching Thames’ first venture into Lottery programming with The National Lottery: Break The Safe. She took Andrew Lloyd Webber’s live musical extravaganza Over The Rainbow to Thames and executive produced the celebrity physical game show Hole In The Wall (BBC One); Simon Bird’s comedy panel show, The King Is Dead (BBC Three) as well as 1001 Things You Should Know (Channel 4) and, for Sky, the revival of Blockbusters.

For BBC One, Suzy executive produced I’d Do Anything, Any Dream Will Do and the RTS, Broadcast and International Emmy award-winning series, How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria? She also spent two years as show runner on NBC shows Clash Of The Choirs (BBC Worldwide), Phenomenon, (Granada America), and Grease: You’re The One That I Want (BBC Worldwide ).

Suzy began her career as a production secretary at the BBC working on classic entertainment shows including Top Of The Pops, Wogan, The Royal Variety Performance, Comic Relief, Russ Abbot, The Les Dennis Laughter Show, The Paul Daniels Magic Show and the ground breaking The Mary Whitehouse Experience. She moved on to become a researcher on programmes including Big Break, The National Lottery Big Ticket, Jim Davidson’s Generation Game, Bruce Forsyth’s Generation Game and the BAFTA award-winning Noel’s House Party before becoming an assistant producer on shows including The Royal Variety Performance, Dale’s All Stars, Two Ronnies’ Theme Night and both the BAFTA TV and Film Awards. Suzy rose through the ranks to become series producer and series editor on many of the UK’s most popular and highest rated entertainment shows including The X Factor: Battle Of The Stars, The Chair with John McEnroe, The National Lottery Stars, Strictly Dance Fever, TV Moments With Jonathan Ross and launched The National Lottery Jet Set.

Jonathan is Head of BBC Newsgathering, the world’s largest broadcast newsgathering operation with more than 60 international bureaux. He is in charge of the day-to-day activity and deployments of journalists working to BBC network news based in the UK and abroad.  His department provides live coverage and reports to all English language radio, television and multimedia platforms across BBC News. He also deputises for the Director of News and is regularly in overall charge of the BBC News division.

He was previously at ITN for 26 years, joining as an editorial trainee and going on to work as a correspondent in the UK, Europe and around the world. Among other major stories, Jonathan covered the Balkans war, both Gulf wars and the Beijing and London Olympics. He has worked extensively in the United States, Russia and Africa, and was Europe Correspondent for three years and Political News Editor for two.

Jonathan received an RTS Judges’ Award for negotiating the UK’s first televised Prime Ministerial debates in 2010. More recently, he was Executive Producer of the BBC’s main debate programmes during the 2016 Brexit Referendum and 2017 and 2019 UK elections.

Jonathan was born in Sheffield and educated at Nottingham University. He joined the BBC in January 2014.

Leigh joined the BBC in February 2021 and brings expertise in leading operations and transformations at scale with a values-driven leadership style.

She has worked in a range of senior executive positions across the Centrica Group spanning operations, finance, strategy and transformation roles. She was previously Managing Director of Customer Operations at British Gas and Group Director of Strategy and Transformation at Centrica.

Her personal values are based strongly in a belief in people and our ability to do amazing things, in fairness, openness and inclusion, in hard work and accountability and all with a constant drive to learn and improve.

Leigh’s first career started in the theatre, as a classical ballerina and then contemporary dance artist working in the USA, Europe and Africa.

She is a qualified Chartered Management Accountant and has a Bachelor of Commerce degree from the University of South Africa

Helen has been Head of Radio 2 since August 2020, previously holding the role of the station’s Head of Content Commissioning since 2018, having previously worked as the station’s Network Editor.

Growing up in Hull, Helen started her career in News working at BBC 5 Live, The Today Programme on BBC Radio 4 and then Newsbeat at Radio 1 before moving into music programming at BBC World Service, before returning to Radio 4 to produce Front Row.

In 2003 she joined Radio 2 to produce the Johnnie Walker Drivetime Show, subsequently launching the Chris Evans Drivetime Show in 2006 and Breakfast Show in 2010, when Chris took over from Sir Terry Wogan.

Helen led the first ever BBC Music Pop Up digital radio station (Radio 2 Eurovision) and has also brokered major partnerships with the likes of the RHS, The Space and Art Fund. Helen was Creative Director of the Radio Academy’s Radio Festival in 2016 and is a founder member of the Young Audio Awards (formerly Young ARIAS) steering committee. In 2018, she was nominated as Individual Of The Year at the Arias. Helen is also head of the Radio Academy.

Jo is responsible for a breadth and range of work within BBC Entertainment. Jo has successfully guided the success of the UK’s biggest Saturday Night Entertainment show Strictly Come Dancing.

She also oversees Factual Entertainment/Reality Shows, The Apprentice, Survivor, Top Gear, Gordon Ramsays’ Future Food Stars & Travel Show Anton & Giovanni’s Adventures in Italy & Spain.

Jo also heads up Entertainment Development pitch process to generate and develop creative ideas and oversee new formats from conception to transmission.

Jo is also the commissioning lead on CIN Night of TV.

Jo has been at the BBC since 2004. Outside of the BBC, Jo was Director of Original Programmes at Sky One for 3 years. Before that, Jo spent 10 years as Head of T4 and 4Music at Channel 4 Television.