Fran Unsworth

She was previously Director, BBC World Service Group, a post to which she was appointed in December 2014. In this role she led the BBC's global news services - BBC World Service, BBC World News and BBC.com - as well as BBC Monitoring, and she chaired the BBC's international development charity, BBC Media Action. The BBC's global news services have a weekly audience of 346m. In this role, Fran was also deputy to the Director of News and Current Affairs. Fran began her journalistic career in 1980 in BBC Local Radio, joining Radio 1's Newsbeat. She spent some time as a network radio producer in Washington DC, and later joined Radio 4's The World At One and PM. Fran was appointed the BBC's Home News Editor and then, in 2001, Head of Political Programmes. In 2005 she became Head of Newsgathering, running one of the world's largest newsgathering operations with bureaux across the world. Between November 2012 and August 2013 Fran was the BBC's Acting Director of News and Current Affairs. Prior to her appointment to the World Service Group, she was Deputy Director of BBC News and Current Affairs.