Tim Willcox
A senior leadership conference lives or dies on the chair in the room. The wrong moderator turns a panel of executives into a sequence of monologues; the right one turns it into a frank exchange that the audience can use. Boards convening on geopolitical exposure, regulatory shock or executive media risk need a host who has actually sat across from a head of state on live television under deadline.
Tim Willcox is a former BBC News anchor of more than twenty years who chairs senior corporate conferences, hosts awards and media-trains executives across geopolitical, financial and crisis-communication briefs.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Tim Willcox
- Two decades of live BBC anchoring on the stories boards now name as risk: the 2011 Egyptian revolution, the Libyan civil war, the Athens bailout, the Catalan crisis, Ukraine, Brexit. He has interviewed the principals, not just read the wires.
- Conference moderator credits at IATA World Aviation Day, World Travel and Tourism Council, World Science Forum, the Emirates Literature Festival and the ipSoft AI Conference. Senior international audiences, technical content, multilingual rooms.
- Media training and crisis-communication coaching for executives at Novartis, HSBC, BT, Nationwide, Crown Prosecution Service, the Serious Fraud Office and the National Audit Office. Direct experience of how a board sounds, and fails to sound, under pressure from a journalist.
- Fluent Spanish and conversational French, with first-hand reporting from Chile, Spain, Argentina, Libya, Egypt, Japan and the Philippines. Useful in any conference room that is not solely Anglophone.
- A trained newsroom interviewer, not a celebrity host. He extracts content from senior executives rather than displacing them.
Biography highlights
- Twenty-plus years as a BBC News anchor across BBC One, BBC World News, the BBC News Channel, BBC Four and BBC radio.
- Former ITN Arts and Media Correspondent whose field reporting ran from the 1994 Rwanda genocide to Iraq under Saddam Hussein; presented live from New York during the 9/11 attacks and was the first ITN journalist to break news of the Paris crash that killed Diana, Princess of Wales.
- Live BBC anchor on the 2010 Chilean mining rescue, the 2011 Japanese earthquake and tsunami, the 2011 Libyan civil war and the 2011 Egyptian revolution.
- Conference chair credits include IATA World Aviation Day (Mauritius), World Travel and Tourism Council (Buenos Aires), World Science Forum (Jordan), ipSoft AI Conference (Barcelona), Emirates Literature Festival (Dubai), Maritime Standard Awards (Dubai) and NHS Expo (Manchester).
- Media training and crisis-communications coaching for Novartis, HSBC, BT, Nationwide, Crown Prosecution Service, Severn Trent Water, the Serious Fraud Office and the National Audit Office.
- Documentaries for Channel 4 and Channel 5; began on Fleet Street writing for The Times, The Telegraph, Mirror Group, the Financial Times and The Spectator.
Biography
The chair of a senior conference is the variable that decides whether a panel becomes a frank discussion or a sequence of pre-cleared talking points. Tim Willcox spent more than twenty years as a BBC News anchor running live interviews under deadline, including with sitting heads of state, and that is the craft he brings to a corporate room.
His on-air career covered the stories that now sit on board risk registers: the 2011 Egyptian revolution, the Libyan civil war, the Athens bailout, the Catalan independence crisis, the Ukraine war, Brexit. Before the BBC he was ITN’s Arts and Media Correspondent, reporting from the front line of the 1994 Rwanda genocide and from Iraq under Saddam Hussein. He presented live from New York during the 9/11 attacks and broke news of the Paris crash that killed Diana, Princess of Wales.
That ground translates directly to international conference work. He has chaired at IATA World Aviation Day in Mauritius, the World Travel and Tourism Council summit in Buenos Aires, the World Science Forum in Jordan, the ipSoft AI Conference in Barcelona and the Emirates Literature Festival in Dubai. He works in fluent Spanish and reasonable French, which matters when the audience is not solely Anglophone.
The third strand is media training. Novartis, HSBC, BT, Nationwide, the Crown Prosecution Service, the Serious Fraud Office and the National Audit Office have used him to coach executives on hostile interviews and crisis communications. The value is the same as on stage: a trained newsroom interviewer who knows exactly how a board sounds when it is not ready.
Key speaking topics
- Geopolitical risk and live news literacy for boards
- Crisis communications and executive media performance
- Leadership under live media scrutiny
- International conference moderation and panel facilitation
- Awards and after-dinner hosting
- Reporting on the front line: lessons from twenty years of breaking news
- Spanish and Latin American business and political coverage
Ideal for
- Boards and ExCos commissioning a chair for senior off-sites on geopolitical, regulatory or reputational risk
- CEOs, CFOs and Chief Communications Officers preparing for hostile media or crisis press conferences
- International industry associations running multilingual flagship summits and awards
- Conference programmers needing a moderator who can carry a head-of-state interview as readily as a panel of operators
Audience outcomes
- A moderated panel that produces actual exchange between senior speakers, not parallel monologues
- Sharper executive performance under journalist-style questioning
- A working sense of how a live news cycle interprets a corporate statement and where the pressure points sit
- Specific reporting examples (Egypt, Libya, Chile, Catalonia, Brexit) that connect macro events to commercial decisions
- A flagship event held to BBC interviewing standards from the chair