John Penrose, Minister for Tourism and Heritage, has appointed Liz Cleaver as Trustee of Historic Royal Palaces. The appointment will be for a term of three years from 27 May 2011.

Liz Cleaver is an experienced media professional with a long and distinguished career at the BBC. Here she fulfilled a variety of roles from radio and television production to launching BBC Knowledge, the forerunner of BBC 4, setting up the interactive capability for all factual and learning programmes and as Controller, BBC Learning, responsibility for the BBC’s learning output and activity. 

Under Liz, BBC Learning launched a new generation of ambitious learning campaigns that inspired and supported millions of people to take action beyond the programmes, through interactive support, community activity and work with partner organisations. These include Peoples War, an initiative encouraging people who lived through the second world war to tell their story, RaW which inspires people to improve their literacy skills, and Breathing Places, a campaign to create wildlife friendly habitats.

Prior to taking up the role of Controller, Learning, Liz set up and ran Interactive Factual & Learning, where she oversaw the development of some groundbreaking and award-winning multi-platform content, including Springwatch, Walking With Beasts, CDX and Coast mobile.

Liz also launched and led BBC Knowledge, the forerunner of BBC Four. Before that, she worked at the BBC as a Comissioning Executive, Executive Editor and a Producer in television and radio. Liz originally worked as a teacher, before moving into BBC radio production.

Liz is currently a Digital Consultant, Chair of The Reading Agency and a trustee of Crisis.