René Carayol (born September 10 1958) is a broadcaster, broadsheet columnist, business and leadership speaker and author. He recently presented the BBC series Did They Pay Off Their Mortgage in Two Years?.
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Born in The Gambia, the son of a diplomat, he was raised in the UK and now lives in London.
Carayol stated in Black Success Stories [1] that Alex Haley's historic novel, Roots, was based on Carayol family records.
Carayol has served as an executive main board director for blue-chip companies and also the public sector, where he was a non-executive director of 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, Peter Kenyon in May 2006 and Kofi Annan, Al Gore and David Cameron in 2007.
He is CEO of the Inspired Leaders Network (ILN) which was founded in 2000 and continues to be in public speaking.
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's television and radio career has seen him become a regular voice on BBC 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 Two Years, which was shown in January and February 2006. The follow-up series Did They Pay Off Their Mortgage in Two Years? began airing in January 2007.
He also presented The Money Programme special "The Fall Of BP's Sun King" in October 2007, investigating the real cause of Lord John Browne's resignation from BP.
René sat in for the Jon Gaunt radio show on Talksport from 11th to the 15th August 2008.
He is a season ticket holder at Chelsea FC and sits in the West Upper Stand.