Trevor Phillips is a writer and television producer. He is co-founder of Webber Phillips Ltd, a data analytics provider and consultancy. He divides his working life between the US and the UK, serving as the Chairman of the New York-based business leaders’ think-tank, the Center for Talent Innovation; and as President of the Council of the John Lewis Partnership, the UK’s largest private company. He is a senior board adviser to the leading executive recruitment company Green Park.
He is the former (founding) chair of the UK’s Equality and Human Rights Commission. He had previously been the Chair of the Commission for Racial Equality and the elected Chair of the Greater London Authority.
Trevor is currently writing a prequel to his successful book Windrush.
Born in London in 1953, Trevor Phillips was educated in London and in Georgetown, Guyana, and studied chemistry at Imperial College London. Between 1978 and 1980, he was president of The National Union of Students.
He joined London Weekend Television as a researcher, rising to become Head of Current Affairs, before leaving to found Pepper Productions. Trevor won two Royal Television Society journalism awards (for The London Programme) in 1988 and 1993. Pepper took the RTS Documentary Series of the Year Award (for Windrush) in 1998. He has been a Vice-President of the Royal Television Society since 2000. His most recent films include Things We Won’t Say About Race That Are True and Has Political Correctness Gone Mad?.
Trevor retains an active interest in the arts and music and is a Board member of the Barbican Arts Centre and of Headlong Theatre. His other voluntary activities include serving as a board member of the Social Mobility Foundation, and of the Employers Network for Equality and Inclusion. He chairs the WEA, a charity providing over 150,000 hours of adult education each year.
He is a Fellow of the Migration Policy Institute (Washington DC); and a Governor of the Ditchley Foundation.
He is the recipient of several honorary doctorates; and was awarded the Order of the British Empire in 1998, and the Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur by the French Government in 2007.