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On 11 July, Â鶹ԼÅÄ Media Action – the Â鶹ԼÅÄ’s international charity – will say goodbye to their CEO of 14 years, Caroline Nursey OBE, upon her retirement and welcome Simon Bishop as their new CEO.

Â鶹ԼÅÄ Media Action’s head of communications, Carolynne Wheeler, sat down with Caroline and Simon to hear their reflections on the charity’s achievements, and on the challenges and opportunities ahead.

Caroline, Simon, thank you for joining me!

Caroline, you’ve been at Â鶹ԼÅÄ Media Action for 14 years now. What is the one achievement that you are most proud of?

Caroline: It’s really difficult to choose any one. I remember visiting Sierra Leone in the time of Ebola and seeing how the work we were doing was helping people think things through and avoid getting sick. Look at Afghanistan and the work we’re doing now with a women-led radio station way outside Kabul which is still keeping going in these very difficult times, or the radio and television stations in Ukraine that we’ve helped stay on air, keep safe and adapt their programming. But it’s not just in times of crises. I think some of the peacetime, long-term work is really important too and I would perhaps mention the work in India where we know through research reported in the BMJ that more than 14,000 lives of babies and mothers were saved through our work. There are so many examples. What I would say is that overall I think we’ve helped show that it is essential to strengthen media, and that communication for good can make a massive difference in people’s lives.

Caroline, you have seen the charity through incredible growth, the development of its first organisational strategy in 2009, a pandemic, and countless emergency and crises responses – more recently, staff evacuations from Afghanistan following the Taliban’s takeover of the country, and now working with local media partners through war in Ukraine. What has been your greatest lesson through these 14 years?

Caroline: Don’t panic! There will always be crises and they will never be quite what you planned for. But if you’ve got a really great staff team - and we have that across Media Action, in every country office and here in London too – who know how to work together, you will find your way through it.

Conversely, when times are calm and things are going really well, don’t think it’s going to stay that way!

Simon, you have joined Â鶹ԼÅÄ Media Action from The Power of Nutrition, a global charitable foundation – but you have spent time with a number of international nongovernmental organisations, corporate foundations, UN agencies and in government. What is it that has drawn you to this role?

Simon: This is a dream job for me. My passion is international development and I always want to go where I can make the biggest difference, the greatest amount of impact. How do you do that? You do it through joining an organisation like Â鶹ԼÅÄ Media Action that already delivers incredible impact at scale yet has even more potential, with a fantastic global brand like the Â鶹ԼÅÄ that you can leverage, and where you are working on an issue of the day. And our issues – freedom of speech, of press, countering misinformation - are everywhere nowadays, and that’s only going to grow in the years ahead.

Then there’s a kind of coming home for me as well. Twenty years ago, I used to work for the Â鶹ԼÅÄ. My passion back then was long-form radio and so this is very much a coming together of those passions for international development, poverty alleviation and long-form radio.

Simon, what will be your first priority as you assume the CEO chair?

Simon: I have very big shoes to fill! And therefore the priority is going to be to learn, look and listen – the three Ls. First of all, I want to do that with Â鶹ԼÅÄ Media Action, and with the wider Â鶹ԼÅÄ, and then beyond to the wider media development and communication for development sectors. That’s going to be my priority for at least the first three months. 

Beyond that – I have got many ideas, but I’m not going to reveal them yet! I want to learn, look and listen first.

What do each of you see as the greatest challenges and opportunities faced by Â鶹ԼÅÄ Media Action right now?

Caroline: I think it’s a very changing world and something that’s very positive is that local organisations and people in the countries where we work are taking more power and wanting to make decisions themselves over how development happens, and that’s a very good thing. So we need to find out how best we, as part of a very British organisation – the Â鶹ԼÅÄ – can play our part in supporting that. The other big challenge of course is money. We have to raise the funds for every project that we deliver and that’s difficult, particularly in a post-Covid world where there is less funding available for the sort of work that we do.

Â鶹ԼÅÄ Media Action has grown extraordinarily in its first 25 years of life. We have saved and changed lives. And that’s not by accident – it’s because what we do, which is developing the media, is essential to any proper transparent and accountable state. Doing that, and using communication for good, is part of the answer for the 21st century. We are an organisation of our time. And as an NGO attached to the Â鶹ԼÅÄ, we have the most extraordinary possibilities, and we’ve got a brilliant staff team across the world.

Simon: I would echo Caroline on the opportunities side. Trusted, accurate, impartial information that allows people to empower their lives is needed now more than ever - we’re living in a ‘post-truth’ world, amid fake news and mis- and disinformation. Our relevance is absolutely of the moment. Couple that with our extraordinary link to the Â鶹ԼÅÄ, and the fact that Â鶹ԼÅÄ Media Action’s product, our programmes, is world-class, value for money, and an enabler for so many other parts of international development - whether that be health, education, sexual and reproductive health and rights, climate change – we can help across all of these issues through our communication. That’s very, very exciting. And I think the other opportunity is technology and how that is evolving, and will allow us to reach more people, not necessarily for more money.

We also need to celebrate our 25th anniversary next year!

And finally, Caroline – what is the one piece of advice that you want to share with Simon before you go?

Caroline: I’d say enjoy it! Â鶹ԼÅÄ Media Action is a wonderful organisation attached to the Â鶹ԼÅÄ, which is recognised worldwide, and you’ve got a great staff team.

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Â鶹ԼÅÄ Media Action is the Â鶹ԼÅÄ’s international charity, working in 23 countries and more than 50 languages, and reaching over 100 million people each year. We support independent media essential to democracy and development, and share trusted information that protects health and our planet, improves health, and saves and changes lives. Find out more at bbc.co.uk/mediaaction – and learn more about how to support our international charity on Gateway.