Althea Efunshile
British arts administrator
Althea Joy Barrett Efunshile (born 20 August 1956) is a senior British public sector executive.
Education
Efunshile has a bachelor's degree in sociology from the University of Essex, a PGCE from Goldsmiths, University of London and a DMS from Buckinghamshire College.
Career
After various posts in teaching, youth work, and educational administration, Efunshile was executive director, education and culture, of the London Borough of Lewisham from 1996 to 2001. She then worked at the Department for Education and Skills from 2001 to 2006, as head of the Children's and Young People's Unit and then directing its Vulnerable Children Group.
In 2007 she joined Arts Council England as executive director, arts planning and investment, becoming chief operating officer 2009–2012 and then deputy chief executive from 2012. She stepped down from this post in October 2016.
In December 2016, it was reported that Efunshile had been proposed by Ofcom for a position as a non-executive director of Channel 4, but she was the only nominee rejected by the culture secretary Karen Bradley, who appointed four men to an all-white board. The chairman of the board Charles Gurassa and chief executive David Abraham also approved of Efunshile's potential appointment. David Lammy, the Labour MP and former Culture minister, said: "This is an absolutely extraordinary decision that really does beggar belief." In December 2017 it was announced that the Culture Secretary Karen Bradley had appointed Efunshile to the Channel 4 Board.
In 2016 she was the founding chair of the National College Creative Industries and she has served as a Council Member of Goldsmiths, University of London.
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This entry incorporates text from “Althea Efunshile” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.