Alignment

"As a non-executive, I specialise in aligning organisational culture with strategy to build long-term value".

Presumably that CV pitch attracted the eye of Lord Patten, looking for a new BBC Trustee, in the direction of 51-year-old Suzanna Taverne. But she'll also stiffen things on the finance side, where pension issues, salary levels and wage structure are still on the agenda, filling hole left by Jeremy Peat.

Suzanna's current roles include non-executive director at the Nationwide, the Ford Motor Credit Company, and Trustee at the Design Museum, the Consumer Credit Counselling Service, and the Shakespeare Schools Festival.  Being good at getting non-exec jobs has got her on the advisory board of recruitment agency Oxinia.

Last year she left Gingerbread, the national charity for single parents, having been chair for six years. Full-time work for Suzanna started at S.G Warburg, thence to The Independent as Finance Director, leaving when Tony O'Reilly and the Mirror Group moved in. A year with Saatchi & Saatchi followed, then spells with FT Finance, publishers of The Investor's Chronicle; Pearsons; in 1999, a switch to Managing Director of the British Museum, when it got the courtyard covered by Lord Foster; and most recently Director of Operations for Imperial College.

She's the daughter of Libdem peer Lord Taverne, formerly known as Dick Taverne, whose resignation from Labour and re-election as an Independent for Lincoln in the 70s sowed the seed for the emergence of the SDP.  

Suzanna followed dad to Balliol, Oxford University, where she read Modern History - amongst her contemporaries, Robert Peston, reading PPE.