Alix Pryde

Dr Alexandra (Alix) Pryde is part of the senior BBC Management team. She is the BBC Controller of Distribution where she leads the Distribution team, negotiating and managing contracts for broadcast distribution of the BBC's TV and radio services in the UK, technical digital switchover, and advising on future broadcast distribution developments.

Biography

Alix Pryde started her career as a physicist, completing a PhD in theoretical physics studying at UCL and Churchill College Cambridge. At Cambridge she worked with Dr Martin Dove as her supervisor in the Department Of Earth Sciences, on projects including Negative Thermal Expansion.

She then became a strategy consultant with McKinsey & Co working on projects on broadcasting and the BBC. Alix is one of the authors to the McKinsey Quarterly report Keeping Baywatch at Bay, a report discussing whether public-service broadcasters could fulfill their mission in the deregulated television environment, which was written with Adrian D. Blake, Nicholas C. Lovegrove, and Toby Strauss.

After leaving McKinsey Alix became Head of Development for The Wireless Group plc, working with CEO and former The Sun editor Kelvin McKenzie, which operated circa 20 commercial radio stations in the United Kingdom, including national speech station talkSPORT (sold to UTV in June 2005) and then she also worked with David Campbell at the Ministry of Sound on a bid for an East Midlands regional radio license that was eventually won by Saga Radio Group.

She joined the BBC in 2001 in BBC Radio & Music Strategy covering the BBC national radio strategy both digital and analogue. In 2003 Alix was promoted to Head of Strategy for BBC News and subsequently BBC Journalism, where she worked alongside Mark Byford, the deputy Director General, in leading the BBC "Creative Future Journalism" project. In 2007 she became Chief Adviser to Caroline Thomson, BBC's Chief Operating Officer. Alix did have an introduction to broadcasting at the BBC station for London GLR where she worked for Chris Evans on his Saturday morning show but only achieved the position of air recognition as “Chris Evans` tea-girl, a role she claimed never to have undertaken as she doesn’t drink tea. She was appointed Controller, BBC Distribution, in February 2009.

In 2008 Alix was named Shell's "Media Woman of the Future", where the judges said: "Alix is an incredibly multi-faceted individual whose achievements reflect her own diversity. Despite the pressure of her role, she has found the time to mentor other women who are embarking on a similar journey and who may otherwise fail to take that crucial first step." Alix was one of Management Today's "35 under 35" young businesswomen to watch again in 2008.

Alix lives in South London and is married with one son.