William McGuire Bryson is an American-British journalist and author. Bryson has written a number of nonfiction books on topics including travel, the English language, and science. Born in the United States, he has been a resident of Britain for most of his adult life, returning to the U.S. between 1995 and 2003, and holds dual American and British citizenship. He served as the chancellor of Durham University from 2005 to 2011.
Sir Lenworth George Henry is a British comedian, actor and writer. He gained success as a stand-up comedian and impressionist in the late 1970s and early 1980s, culminating in The Lenny Henry Show in 1984. He was the most prominent black British comedian of the time and much of his material served to celebrate and parody his African-Caribbean roots.
Sir Steven Geoffrey Redgrave is a British retired rower who won gold medals at five consecutive Olympic Games from 1984 to 2000. He has also won three Commonwealth Games gold medals and nine World Rowing Championships golds. He is the most successful male rower in Olympic history, and the only man to have won gold medals at five Olympic Games in an endurance sport.
Fintan O'Toole is an Irish journalist, literary editor, and drama critic for The Irish Times, for which he has written since 1988. O'Toole was drama critic for the New York Daily News from 1997 to 2001 and is a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books. He is also an author, literary critic, historical writer and political commentator.
Thomas Gerald Reames Davies CBE DL is a Welsh former rugby union wing who played international rugby for Wales between 1966 and 1978. He is one of a small group of Welsh players to have won three Grand Slams including Gareth Edwards, J. P. R. Williams, Ryan Jones, Adam Jones, Gethin Jenkins and Alun Wyn Jones.
Dame Frances Anne Cairncross, is a British economist, journalist and academic. She is a senior fellow at the School of Public Policy, UCLA.
Kingslee James McLean Daley, known professionally as Akala, is a British rapper, journalist, author, activist and poet from Kentish Town, London. In 2006, he was voted the Best Hip Hop Act at the MOBO Awards and has been included on the annual Powerlist of the 100 most influential Black British people in the UK, most recently making the 2021 edition.
Sir Mohammed Fathi Ahmed Ibrahim is a Sudanese-British billionaire businessman. He worked for several telecommunications companies, before founding Celtel, which, when sold, had over 24 million mobile phone subscribers in 14 African countries. After selling Celtel in 2005 for $3.4 billion, he set up the Mo Ibrahim Foundation to encourage better governance in Africa, as well as creating the Ibrahim Index of African Governance, to evaluate nations' performance. He is also a member of the Africa regional advisory board of London Business School.
Bernardine Anne Mobolaji Evaristo is a British author and academic. Her novel Girl, Woman, Other jointly won the Booker Prize in 2019 alongside Margaret Atwood's The Testaments, making her the first Black woman to win the Booker. Evaristo is Professor of Creative Writing at Brunel University London and President of the Royal Society of Literature, the second woman and the first black person to hold the role since it was founded in 1820.
Sir Godfrey Henry Oliver Palmer CD, commonly known as Geoff Palmer, is a professor emeritus in the School of Life Sciences at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, Scotland, and a human rights activist.
Professor Kevin Andrew Fenton, is a Public Health Physician and Infectious Disease Epidemiologist. He is the London Regional Director at Office for Health Improvement and Disparities, Regional Public Health Director at NHS London and the Statutory Health Advisor to the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan. He is the current President of the United Kingdom Faculty of Public Health and holds Honourable Professorships with the University College London and London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
Chinyere Adah "Chi-Chi" Nwanoku is a British double bassist and professor of Historical Double Bass Studies at the Royal Academy of Music. Nwanoku was a founder member and principal bassist of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, a position she held for 30 years.
Thomas Segun Ilube is a British entrepreneur and educational philanthropist and chair of the Rugby Football Union making him the first black chair of a major sport in England. He is the Chair of The Prince’s Trust in the UK.
David Adetayo Olusoga is a British historian, writer, broadcaster, presenter and filmmaker. He is Professor of Public History at the University of Manchester. He has presented historical documentaries on the BBC and contributed to The One Show and The Guardian.
Patrick Philip Vernon is a British social commentator and political activist of Jamaican heritage, who works in the voluntary and public sector. He is a former Labour councillor in the London Borough of Hackney. His career has been involved with developing and managing health and social care services, including mental health, public health, regeneration and employment projects. Also a film maker and amateur cultural historian, he runs his own social enterprise promoting the history of diverse communities, as founder of Every Generation and the "100 Great Black Britons" campaign. He is also an expert on African and Caribbean genealogy in the UK. He was appointed a Clore Fellow in 2007, an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2012 Birthday Honours for "services to the Reduction of Health Inequalities for Ethnic Minorities", and in 2018 was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Wolverhampton.
Margaret Henrietta Augusta Casely-Hayford CBE is a British lawyer, businesswoman and public figure who is active in the voluntary sector. She is Chancellor of Coventry University, chairs the board of trustees of Shakespeare's Globe, and was formerly chair of ActionAid UK and company secretary and head of legal services for leading retailers the John Lewis Partnership. She is in the forefront of working to create diversity on boards.
Vanessa Kingori was chief business officer at Condé Nast Britain and Vogue European business advisor. She was also British Vogue's Publishing Director. Prior to that, Kingori was the publisher of British GQ across all platforms. She worked for media publishing house Condé Nast UK for over a decade, before leaving to join Google.
Jacaranda Books is a Black-owned British independent book publishing firm launched in 2012 and known for their effort promoting diversity in United Kingdom's publishing industry.
Jacqueline "Jacqui" McKenzie is a British human rights lawyer specialising in migration, asylum and refugee law. Her legal career encompasses practice in the areas of civil liberties, crime and immigration with solicitors Birnberg Peirce and Partners, and since 2010 running her own immigration consultancy, McKenzie Beute and Pope (MBP), having previously spent more than a decade in senior local government roles with responsibility for equalities, community development, communications and urban development. She joined human rights law firm Leigh Day as a partner in 2021. She is the founder of the Organisation of Migration Advice and Research, which works pro bono with refugees and women who have been trafficked to the UK. McKenzie has won recognition for her work seeking justice for victims of the Windrush scandal that initially gained notoriety in 2018. She was named one of the top 10 most influential black Britons in the Powerlist 2022.
The 14th annual Powerlist, which names the 100 most influential people of African or African Caribbean heritage in the United Kingdom, was judged by an independent panel and published in November 2020, sponsored by JP Morgan & Co, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Linklaters, Refinitiv, Herman Miller, Facebook and The Executive Leadership Council. The 2021 Powerlist came in a year in which public debate on racial injustice had increased, with the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement and global protests against police brutality. Therefore, chief executive Michael Eboda decided that the 14th Powerlist would honour those who have used their voice to advocate against racial injustice. Furthermore, the rankings highlighted the work of healthcare professionals during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, which also resulted in the awards being held virtually on 17 November 2020, hosted by Kwame Kwei-Armah.
