Bernard Donoghue - Chair

Chairman, LIFT (London International Festival of Theatre)

Bernard is Chairman of the London International Festival of Theatre (LIFT), having been a Board member since 2005 and Deputy Chair since 2007.

He is Trustee of Centrepoint, the youth homelessness charity; a Fellow and Trustee of the World-Wide Fund for Nature UK and Chair of WWF-UK's 50th Anniversary Taskforce; a member of the Cathedral Council of St Paul's Cathedral, London; and a Trustee and Fellow of the Tourism Society. He was a Board Director of Marketing Manchester, 2001 - 2010, and Chairman of VisitManchester, the Manchester tourist board, 2008 - 2010. He was Co-Chair of British Tourism Week, 2008 - 2010.

Bernard had held lobbying, policy, campaigning and communications roles for VisitBritain, the national tourist board; the National AIDS Trust; Sense – the National Deafblind and Rubella Organisation; and Disability Daily, a national campaigning consortium of disability and carers’ organisations, which he founded.  Bernard has worked as a policy and communications advisor in the House of Lords and Commons for various MPs and Peers; for the Secretary-General of the Council of Europe, based in Strasbourg; for the Royal Household and for the late Diana, Princess of Wales. He was a member of the Prime Minister's Communications Advisory Group between 2007 - 2009. He is the author of the 'British Tourism Framework Review', published in 2009 and commissioned by the then Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport.

He is a former Chair of the British Youth Council; London Youth Matters; the Commonwealth Youth Forum; and was the first Chair of the Youth Forum of the United Nations.  He is a former Trustee of the National Youth Agency. Bernard has been a judge of the British Environment and Media Awards (BEMAs) and the Museums and Galleries Awards for several years. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society for the Arts (FRSA), a Fellow of the Tourism Society (FTS), Fellow of WWF-UK, a Member of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (MCIPR) and lives in London.