Felicity is a former senior BBC journalist and presenter who discovered a passion for regeneration. She led the consortium which won the highly contested bid to relocate a major part of the BBC to the North and devised the concept of mediacity:uk on Salford Quays, home to a growing number of major media and digital industries and recognised as a globally significant media hub. Prior to media city she led the team which funded, built and established the country’s most successful arts-based millennium project, The Lowry theatre and gallery complex. Following Lowry’s success, she was asked by Salford City Council to set up a much bigger regeneration project. She established and Chaired Central Salford, a public-private partnership, the largest Urban Regeneration Company in the country. Charged with helping to redevelop what was the original City, Central Salford attracted billions of pounds of new private investment into the area, the benefits of which continue to grow.
Felicity gave up broadcasting to become one of the first directors of the Northwest Development Agency and develop her business interests. She chaired the regional organisation responsible for developing Tourism across the Northwest and Chaired the University Hospital of South Manchester, her ‘local’ albeit major teaching and research hospital.
Felicity’s business career included founding, with colleagues, the Unique Communications Group, a broadcast production and corporate communications company; she was for many years a non executive Director of Nord Anglia PLC. and is a past President of the Greater Manchester Chamber of Commerce & Industry.
Current voluntary roles include Chairing the Buxton International Festival, the Children’s Cancer research charity ‘Friends of Rosie’, Hon. President of the Cheshire Wild-Life Fund and Director of the Royal Northern College of Music. Honours include the CBE for services to regeneration, a number of honorary degrees and an honorary fellowship of the RIBA.