As the CEO of Channel 4, Alex Mahon is a transformative leader who has redefined the UK’s largest free streaming service, making it a powerhouse in digital media. She is the first woman to lead a major UK broadcaster. Under her leadership (since 2017), Channel 4 has successfully navigated the challenges of engaging modern audiences while maintaining its public service ethos. With a sharp focus on innovation, change management, and organisational resilience, Alex provides invaluable insights into how businesses can adapt and thrive in a rapidly evolving landscape.
Alex’s career is as diverse as her expertise. Beginning as a scientist and working as a kitchen porter, she held key leadership roles in media and technology. She led Shine Group, the production company behind global hits like MasterChef and Broadchurch, expanding its reach across 12 countries. She also served as CEO of Foundry, a visual effects software firm with clients like Disney and Google. Her experience across these industries makes her uniquely positioned to speak on the intersection of technology, creativity, and workplace culture.
At Channel 4, Alex has steered the organisation through the challenges of a shifting media landscape. She has driven digital transformation, ensuring the broadcaster remains relevant to younger audiences through streaming and social media. Her leadership is marked by a commitment to fostering honest and open workplace cultures, where transparency and adaptability lead to stronger teams and better business outcomes. She firmly believes that employee engagement is directly tied to organisational success, citing research demonstrating how engaged teams outperform their peers.
Alex brings a pragmatic approach to leadership, sharing real-world lessons on crisis management, innovation, and future-proofing businesses. She has championed progressive workplace policies that set industry benchmarks, including support for employees facing menopause and pregnancy loss; demonstrating how forward-thinking leadership can positively impact employee well-being and retention.
Beyond her executive role, Alex is deeply involved in the media and technology sectors. She has chaired the Royal Television Society Programme Awards, served as a Non-Executive Director at the Edinburgh International Television Festival, and contributed to UK government advisory panels on broadcasting and creative industries. Her expertise is widely recognised, with honours including Variety’s International Achievement in Television Award and an International Royal Industrial Fellowship.
Book Alex Mahon to gain first-hand insights from a leader at the forefront of digital transformation and organisational change. Her experience in navigating disruption, driving innovation, and building engaged teams will equip your business with the strategies needed to thrive in today’s ever-changing world.
In this talk, Alex Mahon will touch upon her leadership principles, how she leads, and how that maps to modern leadership in 2025. 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 narrative and story and tips and principles for leading in the workplace today. Alex has four children, so this talk can also be adapted to the challenges of female leadership.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
