Lis Howell is currently Director of Broadcasting at the City University, the culmination in a career shaping the face of television as we know it today. Lis’s current position continues to form the landscape of broadcast communication as she tutors the news journalists of tomorrow through the University’s Diploma Programme.
Lis Howell joined City University as a Visiting Lecturer in Television in 2002 and initiated the Postgraduate Diploma in Television Current Affairs Journalism from a career that spanned Border Television; Granada; Tyne Tees; Sky News; GMTV and Flextech. Lis has contributed to the most momentous changes in news gathering and niche channel development in the UK. Lis is also a prolific author in murder mystery, much of which takes place in the broadcasting industry she knows so well. Her most recent title published in April 2007 – “The Flower Arranger at All Saints (Northbridge Chronicles Murder Mystery)”, Constable and Robinson; “After the Break“; “The Director’s Cut”; “A Job to Die for” all published by Hodder & Stoughton.
Lis Howell was the chair of the Guardian International Edinburgh Television Festival in 1999. As well as her fulltime work at City University she is currently a consultant with Community Channel and also writes for “Broadcast” magazine.
Lis Howell graduated from Bristol University and took a Postgraduate Diploma in Education at Trinity and All Saints College, Leeds. She was a reporter at Radio Leeds, joining Border TV as a reporter/presenter, then Granada TV and Tyne Tees TV. She became Head of News at Border, then Deputy Programme Controller, winning an RTS award with ITN for coverage of the Lockerbie air disaster.
She came to London as Managing Editor, Sky News. From there she became Director of Programmes at GMTV, then Director of Programmes at the new satellite channel UK Living where she was one of the founders. UK Living was taken over by Flextech and became Living TV and Lis Howell became Senior Vice President at Flextech, running Living, Trouble Challenge and Bravo TV channels until she left to attend Harvard Business School and set up her own website business, bowlofcherries.com. Lis Howell is currently Director of Broadcasting at the City University.
Lis Howell has a daughter aged 21, Alex, at Swansea University. Lis’s partner Richard Parker provides the theological and liturgical research for her new novels. They live in Islington, North London. Her second novel in the Norbridge Chronicle series called “The Chorister at the Abbey” will be published in 2008.