Chantal Rickards

Chantal Rickards is a British television executive who started her career in production at Yorkshire Television, part of the ITV network in the UK. She rose from Researcher to Associate Producer to Producer and later became a single camera Director and Executive Producer on a number of factual entertainment shows including Through the Keyhole, for which she is still the Format Consultant, Countdown, The James Whale Radio Show and Parkinson. She also worked on Masterchef and produced City Hospital for BBC 1. She was Channel Director for the Carlton Food Network / Taste Network for a year before moving to BBC/UKTV as a Commissioning Executive in lifestyle programming. She executive produced 16 series a year for UKTV for their lifestyle channels. Titles included Garden Rivals, Put Your Money Where Your House Is, The Spa of Embarrassing Illnesses and Farm for Fussy Eaters. She then spent a number of years at GroupM's MEC media agency, creating branded content, mainly for TV, including The Book Club for Channel 4, Meals in Moments for Channel Five and One Day in... for BBC World News. In 2015 she moved to California to take up the newly created role of CEO of The British Academy of Film and TV Arts ( BAFTA ) Los Angeles, a post she held until October 2019. In her role at BAFTA, she Executive Produced and had ultimate responsibility for the Britannia Awards which has international distribution.