Alex Mahon, CEO of Channel 4, is the first woman to lead a major UK broadcaster. She has transformed the company into a digital-first public media entity, focusing on diversity, equitable representation, and creativity. Alex shares her leadership experiences, discussing change management, growth, innovation, crisis management, and authenticity. She explores engaging with Gen Z as consumers and colleagues, nurturing creativity, and creating a supportive culture. She also addresses the challenges of catering to a digital-first audience.
Alex's career began in diverse roles, including as a scientist and kitchen porter, before moving into TV production. She worked at Talkback Thames and FremantleMedia, then led creative production companies like Shine Group, known for MasterChef and Broadchurch. She also headed Foundry, a visual effects software company.
At Channel 4, Alex has navigated challenges such as changing audience demands, integrating new technologies, and promoting workforce diversity. Channel 4, with its public-private funding model, faces scrutiny from the government, regulators, and media. Under Alex’s leadership, the company balances creative content with public service obligations. She has enhanced the network's regional presence and championed talent diversity through initiatives like 4Skills. Alex upholds Channel 4’s legacy as an independent, trailblazing organisation. Her tenure blends traditional broadcasting with streaming platforms, sparking national discussions on inclusion and social change. She has reviewed and improved policies to support employees dealing with menopause, fertility issues, pregnancy loss, and breaking corporate taboos.
Alex's industry involvement is extensive. She has chaired the Royal Television Society Programme Awards, served as a Non-Executive Director of the Edinburgh International Television Festival, and participated in the DCMS Advisory Panel on the BBC and the UK Government Creative Industries Council. She is an ambassador for London Tech Week and a founding member of WITs END, a network for women’s development in the tech industry. Alex has been honoured with Variety’s International Achievement in Television Award and an International Royal Industrial Fellowship.
In this talk, Alex Mahon will touch upon her principles of leadership, how she leads, and how that maps to modern leadership in 2024. It will include leading through change, leading through crisis, and what a modern workforce expects from ‘authentic’ leaders. Alex can talk about her background, how it has led to an establishment job, and how she has managed that without losing her sense of self or personality. This can also cover personal drivers, knowing your own narrative and story and tips and principles for leading in the workplace today. Alex has 4 children, so this talk can also be adapted for the challenges of female leadership.
What do a scientist, a face painter, a kitchen porter and a CEO have in common? They are all jobs that Alex Mahon has done and loved, at times but not always. How do you start off wanting to be an astronaut and then run a TV network? It turns out that who you are precedes what you do and that we all need a decent level of self-knowledge. In this talk Alex runs through her background, how she understood what skills and abilities came naturally and how she has used that in her career.
In this talk, Alex Mahon will walk through the key principles of how to embed diversity, inclusion, and equity in your organisation and why they matter. This will use Channel 4 as a world leader in establishing a diverse workforce, including the impact on society by being a Broadcast network. It also includes instructions on how to do this in other organisations, how to get started, and how to handle setbacks.
We read endlessly about Generation Z. We are obsessed with how different they are, and mystified about how we should interact with them. They are fundamental to our future yet can seem like a different species. For those of us over 25, those in companies or creating brands or being employers, this is a generation we need to work with. In this talk Alex Mahon will teach you about Gen Z in the UK today, about what they care about, where they spend their time and how they react emotionally to their digital world.
What happens to the world, to behaviour, to emotions and reactions when consumers spend more than half their waking day watching videos on screens. In the UK, adults watch 5 and a half hours of video a day and it seems to only increase. With a combination of original research and behavioural science, Alex Mahon will talk about what is happening in Britain today, how different types of viewing make people feel and what we may need to think about as societal impacts increase.
Alex Mahon has worked with some of the most creative, the most wonderful and indeed the most complex people in the world. That involves both great joy and great difficulty and is all about the management of culture. The culture is the collective thought and soul of the company. You cannot control it, you cannot hide it, but the right creative cultures have the potential to capture lightning in a bottle. Whether you will capture the lightning is hard to know but it sure isn’t as simple as staying in one place with a few bottles and your fingers crossed.
