As CEO, Seetha Kumar is responsible for the strategic direction and overall leadership of Creative Skillset’s activities. Under her leadership, Creative Skillset has successfully changed its strategy to focus on expanding and strengthening its work with the UK’s screen-based industries. She has also significantly bolstered the organisation’s revenue streams, including through winning the contract to deliver the BFI’s Future Film Skills Programme, to ensure Creative Skillset is able to continue to help future-proof the UK’s screen-based creative sector in a fast changing and globally competitive skills market.
Seetha is also a member of the Creative Diversity Network board and the Mayor of London’s Skills for Londoners Taskforce. Before becoming Creative Skillset CEO in 2015, Seetha was Vice President of Pearson Qualifications International following leadership roles across Pearson’s vocational and higher education teams.
Seetha’s media sector leadership roles include Controller, BBC Online – when she drove digital literacy, rationalised the service and doubled audience growth while clearing the 20% budget over-run. She previously launched BBC HD, the UK’s first free-to-air public service HD channel. Her long BBC programme-making career includes roles as Creative Director, Documentaries and Executive Producer, Features.
Seetha started her career as the first woman reporter at the Financial Express in New Delhi, India, before working for independent production companies making programmes for Channel 4.