Kathryn Bishop CBE

Kathryn was appointed as the first Chairman of the Welsh Revenue Authority in April 2017, a new public body set up to collect taxes in Wales for the first time in 800 years, when some specific taxes were devolved to Wales. She served as a Civil Service Commissioner from 2012 to 2017, as one of 11 commissioners in the UK with responsibility for regulating all appointments into the civil service. She has also held a number of non-executive directorships within government, including at the UK Border Agency, part of the Home Office, the UK Intellectual Property Office and at the Welsh Assembly Government.

She was awarded a CBE in June 2021 for services to diversity and public administration and is currently the Chairman of the Dean Close Foundation, a group of schools and nurseries, and a non-executive on the board of DAC Beachcroft, an international law firm.

She has spent the last decade working to help individuals - both men and women - build successful working lives and has poured everything she has learnt into her first book, Make Your Own Map. The book focuses on women’s working lives, but contains useful insights for everyone. Her new book - on the importance of conversations around the boardroom table - is due out later in 2023 and is called Board Talk: 18 crucial conversations that count inside and outside the boardroom.

Before Oxford, Kathryn led and managed multi-million pound transformation programmes in various businesses and a number of merger projects in the financial services industry.

Kathryn has a BA (Hons) Summa Cum Laude from Wellesley College, USA, and an MPhil from Oxford.