Biographies

Director, BBC Vision and non-executive director, BBC Worldwide

Jana Bennett was appointed Director of BBC Vision in November 2006.

Jana is in charge of one of the world's leading multimedia content groups, commissioning, producing and broadcasting across BBC Television and the web.

She heads the BBC's television channels: BBC One through to BBC Four, BBC HD, CBBC and CBeebies.

The Vision group also includes BBC Films, Britain's second largest funder of UK film.

In addition, Jana has overall responsibility for BBC Archive content and editorial management of UKTV and BBC America.

Jana leads the four commissioning teams: BBC Drama, BBC Comedy, BBC Entertainment and BBC Knowledge.

During Jana's tenure, BBC TV programmes have gained critical acclaim across the world.

Award-winners include landmark factual series (such as Life In Cold Blood and Amazon), entertainment shows (from QI to Strictly Come Dancing to Top Gear), new comedy (such as Gavin And Stacey and Outnumbered), and drama (from classics like Cranford, to science fiction in the shape of Doctor Who, to groundbreaking new series such as Criminal Justice and Being Human).

In film, Vision has also supported a number of successes, most recently Oscar-winning Man On Wire and The Damned United.

Jana is a member of the BBC's Executive Board.

She is also a non-executive Director of BBC Worldwide and sits on the Boards of BBC America and UKTV.

From April 2002, Jana served as the BBC's Director of Television. She oversaw the launch and expansion of the BBC's portfolio of digital channels, BBC Three, BBC Four, HDTV and the growth of the highly acclaimed children's channels, CBBC and CBeebies.

Previously, Jana had been Executive Vice President and General Manager at Discovery Communications in the US. She played a key role in the strategic development of Discovery's channel portfolio in North America, particularly at TLC (The Learning Channel), which gained new audiences in an increasingly fragmented market.

Jana first joined the BBC in 1979 as a news trainee and worked on Panorama, Nationwide, The Money Programme and Newsnight.

She was appointed editor of Horizon in 1990, and was responsible for commissioning a number of Emmy award-winning films before becoming the first woman to lead BBC Science, expanding the range and ambition of the content with series such as Walking With Dinosaurs, The Human Body and Meet The Ancestors.

In 2000 she was awarded an OBE in The Queen's Birthday Honours for services to science broadcasting.

Born in New Hampshire, USA, Jana lived in Britain from 1969 until her time at Discovery.

She was educated at Bognor Regis Comprehensive School, then studied politics, philosophy and economics at St Anne's College, Oxford. She was awarded an MSc (Dist) at the London School of Economics, majoring on strategic analysis and international and defence studies.

Active in organisations both within and outside the TV industry, Jana Bennett is a fellow of the Royal Television Society, a Governor of the Royal Shakespeare Company and a member of BAFTA. She also sits on the board of the charity Comic Relief and is a Patron of the Oxford University Museum of Natural History.