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Spotlight on Kate Phillips, Shrewsbury High School
As we count down to the GDST Alumna of the Year Award 2018, we’re shining the spotlight on each of our trailblazing finalists. Here, we find out more about Kate Phillips, alumna of Shrewsbury High School.
Kate Phillips is the Controller of BBC Entertainment, overseeing all entertainment strategy and programming across all BBC Television channels, BBC iPlayer, BBC Three and other digital platforms.
She has responsibility for over 60 shows a year including Strictly Come Dancing, Top Gear, Masterchef, The Apprentice, Dragons Den, The Graham Norton Show, Have I Got News For You, Would I Lie to You, QI, Mastermind, University Challenge, Live at the Apollo, Murder in Successville, Asian Provocateur and big one off events such as Comic Relief, Sport Relief, Children in Need, the BAFTA’s and Eurovision!
She has also worked as the Creative Director of Formats for BBC Worldwide, where she was responsible for a formats catalogue of more than 200 titles, including, The Great British Bake Off, The Great British Sewing Bee, Dr Foster, Luther and The Office overseeing international versions of the shows everywhere from Australia to Peru.
Prior to this, she worked as a channel executive for BBC One and BBC Three, as a co-owner and director of Mast Media, an award-winning television formats business and she ran a successful training scheme for three years alongside her day job entitled Future Formats, offering fully funded training places to people who hadn’t worked in TV before, teaching them how to develop and write TV shows.
Kate started in television as a runner on The Big Breakfast where her jobs included cleaning a presenter’s loo each morning and making hundreds of cups of coffee! Kate worked her way up to producer level making many entertainment and comedy shows for the BBC, ITV and Channel 4.
However love of TV really started with GDST when she was put in charge of the annual 6th Form entertainment and she and her friends created ‘A Day in the Life of TV’ spoofing various TV shows. She had no idea where it would all lead! The dynamism, enthusiasm, talent and humour which marked her out early in her career, and led her to attaining such a senior role at the BBC, are the qualities she brings to inspiring others to believe in themselves and to achieve whatever they set their sights on.
