New Board Structure For Screen Yorkshire

Screen Yorkshire has appointed three new Board Members, including Sarah Doole, Creative Director for Drama and Head of Indie Drama at BBC Worldwide, as it embarks on delivering the £15m Yorkshire Content Fund for TV, film, games and digital.
The three new Board Members have extensive commercial and financial skills and experience:

Sarah Doole – Sarah is Creative Director for Drama and Head of Indie Drama at BBC Worldwide. She works with indies to finance, distribute and export British fiction around the world and represents BBC Worldwide on the boards of its invested indies including Stephen Fry’s indie, Sprout, and Clerkenwell, producer of Misfits. Sarah began her career at Yorkshire Television as a researcher, producer and Head of Development before becoming Director of Enterprises at Yorkshire Tyne Tees. She has worked in the USA for major cable network The Family Channel (now ABC Family) and at Granada as Creative Director for Commercial Ventures. Sarah joined 2Entertain as Head of Independents before moving to the Indie Unit at BBCW in 2007 where she was Director of Drama, Comedy and Children’s for five years.

Ian Roe – Ian is a chartered accountant who has worked in media for over 20 years, primarily in television programme production. Based for 17 years at Yorkshire Television in Leeds he held finance roles in YTV, Granada Productions and, latterly, ITV Productions where he was Director of Finance with a remit across all programme genres and 5 production sites, which together produced around half of ITV's programme slate for the UK and overseas.

Richard Gerard – Richard has held Financial Director roles at B&Q Logistics and at ITV plc during 10 years working within the production/studios businesses. Richard qualified as a chartered accountant with Arthur Anderson & Co at their London office and brings a wealth of experience in audit, having also worked in internal audit within Courtaulds Plc’s worldwide operations in the 1990s. Richard now runs his own FD consultancy business, providing a range of financial and commercial assistance to SMEs in the North of England.

In addition, John Surtees, former Director of Resources at ITV and an existing Screen Yorkshire Board Member, takes over as Chair from Steve Abbott (producer of A Fish Called Wanda; Brassed Off; and Michael Palin’s travel series). Steve stands down after ten years as Chair but will continue as a Board Member alongside Cameron McCracken (Managing Director of Pathe UK and Executive Producer of over 30 films, including The Queen, Slumdog Millionaire and The Iron Lady) and Charles Cecil (Managing Director of Revolution Software and developer of games franchises such as Broken Sword).

John Surtees, Screen Yorkshire Chair, said: "I’m delighted to take over as Screen Yorkshire’s Chair and would like to thank Steve Abbott for going beyond the call of duty in guiding Screen Yorkshire since its formation ten years ago. We’re entering a new era for the organisation and I know that Sarah, Ian and Richard will bring an abundance of new skills to the organisation. Combined with the continued commitment and expertise of our existing board members we have the ideal balance for this new chapter for Screen Yorkshire."

Screen Yorkshire recently launched the new £15m Yorkshire Content Fund which has secured £7,500,000 of investment from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), and will be further matched by private sector investors on a project-by-project basis. The Yorkshire Content Fund is managed by Screen Yorkshire and will invest in content creation by Yorkshire-based companies as well as to attract productions looking to establish a base and film within the region.

www.screenyorkshire.co.uk/
(GK)