René Carayol
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
René Carayol (born September 10th 1958) is a broadcaster, broadsheet columnist, business and leadership speaker and author. He currently presents the BBC series Pay Off Your Mortgage In 2 Years.
Born in Gambia, the son of a diplomat, he was raised in the UK and now lives in London.
Carayol has served as an executive main board director for blue-chip companies and also the public sector, where he is a former Non-Executive Director of the Inland Revenue. Starting with Marks and Spencer in 1982 and rising through the ranks to Senior IT Manager and Executive, he was headhunted by Pepsi Co in 1992 and sat on the board of directors for Pizza Hut. He then joined IPC Electric as Managing Director and took the business from the concept stage through to the acquisition by AOL Time Warner. He was the first black person and first IT Director to have ever sat on the IPC board.
René was awarded an MBE in 2004 for outstanding service to the business community. He has provided leadership support to the British Prime Minister's Delivery Unit, and is now a Visiting Professor at CASS Business School.
Carayol has acted as an advisor to the CBI, McKinsey & Co and Barclays, amongst many other organisations. He has chaired and addressed conferences across the world in the retail, financial, technology, energy and government sectors. He has also conducted the first onstage business interview with Sven-Göran Eriksson in 2003 and hosted The Sunday Times UK Business Week. He has continued to interview prominent people including Bill Clinton and Mikhail Gorbachev in 2005 and Peter Kenyon in May 2006.
As an author he has produced two books - Corporate Voodoo in 2001 (now in its third edition) and the sequel, My Voodoo in 2003. René is a regular broadsheet columnist, most notably for The Guardian. René is the CEO of the Inspired Leaders Network (ILN) which was founded in 2000. René continues to be actively involved in public speaking.
His television and radio career has seen him become a regular voice on Radio 5 Live and present the critically acclaimed Channel 4 film The Man From The Met, on the challenges facing Sir John Stevens at the helm of the Metropolitan police. He is also a press reviewer on Sky Breakfast News and has been an expert witness on Mind of a Millionaire.
Carayol is the presenter of BBC2's business program, Pay Off Your Mortgage In 2 Years, which was shown in January and February 2006 and has a second series due to air in January 2007.
