Sharmila began her career in strategy consulting and has broad sectoral experience across health, media, utilities and financial services from both the private and public sectors. She serves as a non-executive director at Halma plc, ITV plc, Coutts Bank and Severn Trent plc. She is appointed by HM Treasury to chair the Sovereign Grant Audit Committee and sits as a non-executive director for the Lord Chamberlain’s Committee of the Royal Household. She also serves as a trustee of both the Governing Council of Oxford University where she chairs the Audit and Scrutiny Committee and the Thomson Reuters Founders Share Company. In her executive career, Sharmila spent 15 years at the BBC, latterly as chief operating officer for BBC future Media and Technology, the division that built the iPlayer, and was most recently chief executive at Wilton Park, an executive agency of the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office convening international dialogues for senior policy makers from around the world with a special focus on global health. Sharmila read medicine at the University of Oxford and has been a world fellow at the University of Yale since 2007. She is also a chartered accountant and was awarded an OBE in 2014 for services to medical research.