Biographies

Non-executive Director, BBC Worldwide

Simon Clift is a Non-executive Director of BBC Worldwide.

Born in Chalfont St Giles, England in 1958, Simon studied Modern and Medieval Languages at Cambridge.

After university he joined Unilever in 1982 as a management trainee in marketing. Over the next decade, he held various marketing positions in the UK, Portugal, Austria and Mexico, before returning to be marketing director of Elida Gibbs, Unilever's personal care business in the UK.

In 1997 he was appointed managing director of Elida Gibbs Brazil, Unilever's second largest personal care business globally (after the US) and subsequently chairman of Unilever's Latin American Personal Care category, also based in Sao Paulo.

He has subsequently served as Global President of Marketing for Home & Personal Care, and then Group Vice-President for Personal Care, in which role he was directly responsible for the worldwide strategy, marketing, innovation and advertising for Unilever's €12billion personal care business.

He is now Unilever's (first) global Chief Marketing Officer, responsible for how Unilever develops and executes its core function of marketing across all categories – incorporating worldwide advertising agency policy, market research, media buying, marketing capability, recruitment, training and career development.

He is interested in music – particularly of the Baroque period – and the arts in general; and he is a season ticket holder at Chelsea.

He lives in London with his Brazilian foster son and a counterfeit Brazilian dalmatian, but escapes more frequently than is decent to his home in Paraty, a fine colonial town on the coast in the state of Rio de Janeiro.