An analysis conducted by the Guardian and Operation Black Vote has established that of the 1,049 most powerful people in Britain, just 36 are from ethnic minorities – and only seven of those are women.
Who are they?
Sajid Javid
Javid is the secretary of state for communities and local government. Since he became MP for Bromsgrove in 2010, he has also served as business secretary, culture secretary, and both economic and financial secretary to the Treasury.
At 25, Javid became the youngest ever vice-president of Chase Manhattan Bank, later moving to Deutsche Bank where he was a senior managing director.
Priti Patel
Patel is the secretary of state for international development. She has also been employment minister and exchequer secretary to the Treasury, and she was appointed by David Cameron as the first UK-India diaspora champion. She has been Conservative MP for Witham since 2010.
Ivan Menezes
Menezes is the chief executive of Diageo, a FTSE 100 company and the world’s largest producer of spirits. He is also chairman of the UK charity Movement to Work and a council member of the Scotch Whisky Association.
Indian-born Menezes sits on the global board of the Kellogg school of management at Northwestern University, having previously studied there. It has been ranked as one of the best business schools in the world. He is also a non-executive director of the US fashion retailer Coach, Inc.
Rakesh Kapoor
Kapoor is the chief executive of the FTSE 100 company Reckitt Benckiser. The company is a global producer of health, hygiene and home products, such as Durex, Dettol and Clearasil. Kapoor rose to become chief executive of the company in 2011, having worked there since 1987.
Rakesh Shaunak
Shaunak is chairman of MacIntyre Hudson accountants, one of the top 20 accountancy firms as ranked by the Institute of Chartered Accountants. He has been a partner in the firm since 1985. He is also the managing partner for its education unit, acting on behalf of a number of schools and education bodies.
Sir Harpal S Kumar
Kumar is the chief executive of Cancer Research UK, one of the UK’s biggest and most successful charities. He holds honorary doctorates from two universities, and was a Baker scholar at Harvard Business School – making him part of the top 5% of his class.
Kumar was knighted in 2016’s New Year honours list for services to cancer research. He is chair of the National Cancer Advisory Group and a member of the National Cancer Transformation Board.
Clive Adams
Adams is the territorial leader of the Salvation Army in the UK and Republic of Ireland – its equivalent position to chief executive. The charity operates in 128 different countries and was named as the fourth largest US charity by Forbes in 2015, while also ranking highly in the UK. Adams is a teacher by profession, born in South Africa.
Farrah Storr
Storr is the editor-in-chief of the international fashion magazine Cosmopolitan. Before that, she launched Women’s Health, a magazine that became the UK’s bestselling health and lifestyle publication.
Previous roles include deputy editor at Top Santé and features director at Marie Claire in Sydney.
Edward Enninful
Enninful is the editor of British Vogue. Although the magazine is almost a century old, he is its first black, and first male, editor.
Enninful was fashion and style director at W Magazine before making the unusual transition from stylist to editor. Aged 18, he was the youngest fashion director ever for an international publication, i-D. He holds an OBE for his services to diversity in fashion.
Muhammed Butt
Butt is the Labour leader of Brent council, one of the UK’s most diverse boroughs. He is on the Local Government Assocation’s board for culture, tourism and sport.
Sachin Shah
Shah has been leader of Harrow council since May 2016, and was previously its cabinet member for finance. He is the youngest minority ethnic leader of a council is London. Shah grew up in Harrow and attended local comprehensive schools.
Jas Athwal
Athwal is the leader of Redbridge council, which turned Labour for the first time in 2014 under his leadership. He is also the council’s first leader from a BAME background.
He was first elected to the council in May 2010 and became leader of the Labour group in October 2011.
Ravi Govindia
Govindia is the Conservative leader of Wandsworth council. He has been a councillor since 1982, and sits on the government’s panel of experts on estate regeneration.
In recognition of his services to government, Govindia became a CBE in the 2016 New Year honours list.
On the Putney Conservatives website, Ugandan-born Govindia talks of the pain of having had to leave the country during Idi Amin’s dictatorship.
Chris Hughton
Hughton is manager of Brighton Hove and Albion football team. Under his leadership, Brighton were promoted to Premier League status last year, for the first time in the club’s history.
Before management, Hughton had a 13-year stint at Tottenham Hotspur, and was the first dual-heritage player to represent the Republic of Ireland.
Magnus Djaba
Magnus Djaba is the global president of the world’s most famous advertising agency, Saatchi & Saatchi. Renowned for campaigns such as T Mobile’s “Life’s for Sharing”, he also helped to establish Kevin Bacon as the face of EE. Since Djaba joined as London CEO in 2011, revenue at Saatchi & Saatchi has grown by 50%.
Rishi Shori
Shori is the Labour leader of Bury council. He is the first ever BAME leader of a council in Greater Manchester and the youngest leader Bury council has ever had.
In May 2017 he was appointed to Greater Manchester’s mayoral leadership for young people and social cohesion by the mayor, Andy Burnham.
He was first elected in 2009, and has held the portfolio of adult care, health and housing. Under his leadership, the council was ranked as having the best adult care services in the north-west.
Tariq Mahmood Ahmad
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon is a Conservative life peer, the minister of state for the Commonwealth and United Nations and the prime minister’s special representative on preventing sexual violence in conflict.
He has been minister for skills and aviation security and minister for countering extremism and was previously vice-chairman of the Conservative party. Before politics, he worked in banking and finance.
Sam Gyimah
Gyimah is the minister for prisons. He was previously a minister for education.
Before he was elected as the Conservative MP for East Surrey in 2010, he had a career at Goldman Sachs and was an entrepreneur.
He studied PPE at Oxford, where he was elected the first black president of the Oxford Union in 50 years.
Alok Sharma
Sharma holds the combined portfolio of housing and planning in the Conservative government.
He held on to his seat in Reading in this year’s election, despite predictions he would lose it. In his time as an MP, he has been on the Treasury select committee and the science and technology select committee. Before going into politics, he was a chartered accountant.
Humza Yousaf
Yousaf is the Scottish government minister for transport and the Islands.
He was elected to the Scottish parliament in 2011 when he was only 25, making him the youngest MSP ever elected. His progression to minister for external affairs and international development came quickly, a little over a year later, making him the youngest ever – and first BAME – member of the Scottish government.
Yousaf is also a columnist at the Glasweigan paper the Evening Times.
Marvin Rees
Rees is the mayor of Bristol, the first directly elected mayor of African descent in Europe.
Rees has varied experience across journalism, campaigning and community engagement. He was part of the Yale World Fellows Programme, which takes on people who have shown their potential to be world leaders by excelling in their personal and professional lives. Rees also founded the City Leadership Programme in 2012, taking talented young people from working-class backgrounds and preparing them for national and international leadership.
Sadiq Khan
Khan is the mayor of London. Despite being on the receiving end of a nasty campaign that focused on his Muslim faith, Khan was elected with 1.3m votes, securing the biggest personal mandate of any politician in British history. He is the first BAME mayor of London.
State-school-educated Khan was a human rights lawyer and local councillor before being elected to his Tooting seat in 2005, which he gave up for the mayoralty.
Hardyal Singh Dhindsa
Hardyal Singh Dhindsa is the police and crime commissioner for Derbyshire – the first and only PCC from a BAME background.
He has been a local politician since 1993 having held a number of council cabinet posts – including education and social care, planning and highways, and leisure. He is a qualified probation officer, with more than 30 years’ experience.
Valerie Amos
Lady Amos is the director of Soas University of London. She is both the first female and first non-white person to take the role at the university, where students kicked up a storm earlier this year over the university’s overly white reading list.
Before her position at Soas, Amos was the undersecretary general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator at the UN, served as UK high commissioner to Australia, and was appointed a Labour life peer under the 1997 Blair government.
Her career has been dotted with firsts for the UK: the first black woman to sit in the cabinet, the first black leader of the House of Commons and the first black woman to lead a university.
Max Lu
Prof Max Lu is president and vice-chancellor of the University of Surrey. A member of the prime minister’s Council for Science and Technology, he is also on the boards of the National Physical Laboratory, Universities UK, and the leadership council of the National Centre for Universities and Business. Locally, he also serves as deputy lieutenant of Surrey and a patron of the charity Transforming Housing.
Before his appointment at Surrey, he enjoyed a long stint in academic and leadership positions at the University of Queensland.
Lu was recently awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia for his services to education and international research and to Australia-China relations. He was named as a Queensland Great in 2013 and one of Australia’s 100 most influential engineers in 2014, when he also received the Australia-China Achievement Award for education.
Vaughan Gething
Gething is the Welsh assembly member for Cardiff South and Penarth. He holds the position of cabinet secretary for health, wellbeing and sport.
Gething was the youngest ever president of the TUC in Wales, and has served as a county councillor and school governor. He was previously chair of the cross-party project Right to Vote, encouraging greater voting participation from BAME communities in Wales. Gething was born in Zambia and brought up in Dorset.
Sharon White
White is the CEO of the media regulator Ofcom. Educated at a state comprehensive in east London, she is the first black woman to sit in the top seat at Ofcom.
Before Ofcom, White held a number of senior posts during a long career in the civil service. She was second permanent secretary at the Treasury, and held board-level positions at the Ministry of Justice and the Department for International Development. A trained economist, she was formerly a senior economist at the World Bank.
Perminder Mann
Mann is the CEO of Bonnier Publishing UK, one of the UK’s top publishing firms. She was in the Bookseller’s list of the 100 most influential people in the publishing industry in 2015 and 2016 and was named as one of the top 10 most influential people in publishing and writing at the Hospital Club h100 awards.
Mann co-founded Blink Publishing in 2014, the first publisher to collaborate with a vlogger, the bestselling Alfie Deyes.
Daljit Lally
Lally is the CEO of Northumberland county council and Northumbria Healthcare NHS foundation trust. She was awarded an OBE in 2015 in recognition of her improvements to health and social care services in Northumberland.
Lally set up the Virtual Carers Centre through Carers Northumberland, which won a Local Government Award for innovation. She is a trained nurse with an MBA from Durham University.
Mohammed Khan
Khan is the Labour leader of Blackburn with Darwen council. He was awarded an OBE in 2007 for his work in local government. The councillor was born and brought up in Pakistan and came to Blackburn in 1965.
Before leading the council, Khan was mayor of Blackburn with Darwen between 2008 and 2009. A councillor since 1992, Khan has held a number of portfolios including housing and health.
Ranjit Banwait
Banwait is the Labour leader of Derby city council. He was elected as the first minority ethnic leader of the council in May 2014.
Banwait was elected as the councillor for Boulton Ward in 2006, and is Derby born and bred.
He describes himself as the proud son of Indian immigrants who settled in Derby in the 1960s, tracing his roots back to sugar-cane farmers in the Punjab. He was the first person in his family to go to university.
Sohail Munawar
Munawar is the Labour leader of Slough borough council. He was elected to the position in 2014, following the resignation of Rob Anderson alongside a number of his cabinet. Upon becoming leader, Munawar was quoted in the Slough Observer saying: “I might not be a great speaker but I can promise you I love this country and I love this place.”
Owen Williams
Owen Williams is the chief executive of Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS foundation trust. He is a trustee of the NHS Confederation, which advocates on behalf of the health and care system.
He was previously chief executive of two councils – Calderdale and Rossendale.
Karamjit Singh
Singh is the chairman of University Hospitals of Leicester NHS trust. He has set up free medical camps in India, has been a commissioner at the Electoral Commission and a member of the Queen’s Counsel selection panel and is a voluntary trustee of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.
Singh was awarded a CBE in 1999 for services to the administration of justice.
Pradip Patel
Pradip Patel is the chairman of Frimley Health NHS foundation trust. He was previously the deputy chairman of Hillingdon hospital foundation trust and director of healthcare strategy at Walgreens Boots Alliance.