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Sara Catherine Nathan (born 16 February 1956)[1] is a former British broadcaster who now sits on the boards of a number of public bodies.
Nathan was educated at Wimbledon High School, Cambridge University and Stanford University which she attended on a Harkness Fellowship. Her college at Cambridge was New Hall and she was vice-president of the Cambridge Union.[1]
Broadcasting
Nathan was a BBC journalist for 15 years on Newsnight, Breakfast Time and The Money Programme.[1] She was on the launch team for Radio 5 Live[2] and was the first editor of its morning programme. After that she became Britain's first female editor of a TV network news programme when she became editor of Channel 4 News in 1995, a post she held until 1997.[2][3][4]
She was a member of the Radio Authority from 1999 to 2003,[3] a founder board member of Ofcom,[2][5] where her term ended at the end of 2007, and was an Editorial Adviser to the BBC Trust from January 2008 until its abolition in 2016.[citation needed] She has also served on the board of ATVOD,[6] the regulatory agency designated by Ofcom as the "co-regulator" of television on demand. Nathan was a Senior Hearings Manager in BBC HR – mostly working on Equal Pay – from November 2018 to August 2019.
Other roles
She was a member of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority and of the Professional Conduct Committee of the Bar Council. She was a Commissioner for the Marshall Scholarships until December 2006. She was on the Regulatory Decision Committee of the Financial Services Authority from 2001 to 2007, and was a member of the ICSTIS PhonepayPlus Committee (which regulates premium rate telephony) until November 2008. She chaired The Animal Procedures Committee, a body that advises the British Home Secretary on matters related to animal experimentation in the UK, until its abolition in 2012. She was a lay member of the Judicial Appointments Commission from January 2006 to January 2012.
From April 2012 to 2016 she was a Public Appointments Assessor, chairing the appointment of Chairs of public bodies, reporting to David Normington, the First Civil Service Commissioner, and a Chair of disciplinary hearings for the Nursing and Midwifery Council. She was a member of the board of the Solicitors' Regulation Authority from 2010 to 2015. She was also a trustee of Why Me?, a charity promoting restorative justice.
In 2015, Nathan co-founded a charity Refugees at Home, which finds hosts in Britain for destitute asylum-seekers and refugees.[7][8] She has since hosted 42 refugees (as of March 2024) from many countries including Syria, Sudan, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Iran, Afghanistan and Egypt.[citation needed] The charity has made over 5,000 placements and hosted for over 500,000 individual person nights.
She became a trustee of the Cambridge Union Society in May 2020 and chair of EASE, an asylum-seeker drop-in based in Acton at much the same time.
She was a tribunal chair for the Nursing and Midwifery Council until April 2020.[9][10]
She has been a tribunal chair for Social Work England since December 2019. She joined the King's Counsel Selection Panel in 2020[11] and became chair of the appointments board for the Accountants' Regulatory Board at the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW). She is also a lay assessor for Greater London Authority public appointments but that is largely inactive.
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She was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the Queen's Birthday Honours, announced on 14 June 2008.[12]
She lives in Acton, London, with her husband, the composer and now-retired director of music at the Yehudi Menuhin School, Malcolm Singer. They have two adult children and two grandchildren.
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