Association of Leading Visitor Attractions

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Baroness Patience Wheatcroft of Blackheath

Chairman of ALVA

Patience Wheatcroft was the editor in chief, Europe, of The Wall Street Journal until February 2011. Prior to joining the Journal, Ms. Wheatcroft served as a non-executive director of Barclays plc and Shaftesbury plc as well as a consultant on business and public affairs.

She joined the Board of ALVA in 2012 and was elected as the Chairman of ALVA in September 2020, succeeding the founder Chairman, Lord Lee.

In 2008, London Mayor Boris Johnson appointed her to chair The Mayors Forensic Audit Panel investigating the finance and governance of the Greater London Authority and London Development Agency. The Panel delivered its report later that year. Up until this time, Patience had spent her career in journalism, culminating in the editorship of the Sunday Telegraph, which she took on in 2006.

Previously, she was Business and City Editor of The Times for nine years from 1997, where she wrote a daily commentary column on business matters in addition to a weekly column addressing broader political and social issues. Her newspaper career began with the Daily Mail and included roles at the Sunday Times, Mail on Sunday and Daily Telegraph. In 1986, she launched the specialist trade publication, Retail Week, and edited it for five years.

She has appeared frequently on radio and television and is a regular speaker at conferences and dinners. She has won the Wincott Award for Senior Financial Journalism and several other industry awards. In 2006, she received an honorary doctorate from City University in London.

Ms Wheatcroft is a member of the British Olympic Association Advisory Board, the UK/India Round Table and the Council of the Royal Albert Hall, a visiting fellow at Oxford Universitys Centre for Corporate Reputation and a member of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford.

In December 2010 Ms Wheatcroft was created a life peer as Baroness Wheatcroft of Blackheath, and since November 2019 sits as an unaffiliated Peer.