Rhodri Talfan Davies

Rhodri Talfan Davies is a Welsh media executive. He will join the BBC Board from 1 February as an Executive Director, a position he will continue to hold when he takes over as Interim Director-General at the BBC on 3 April 2026. He was the director of BBC Cymru Wales from 2011-2020. He is a former journalist and communications executive.

Personal life and education

Davies was born in Cardiff in 1971 to Elizabeth Siân Vaughan Yorath and Geraint Talfan Davies, the chairman of Welsh National Opera and a former controller of BBC Cymru Wales. His grandfather Aneirin Talfan Davies was a poet, broadcaster and literary critic.
Educated at Ysgol Gyfun Gymraeg Glantaf, Cardiff, and Royal Grammar School, Newcastle upon Tyne, Davies went on to study as an undergraduate at Jesus College, Oxford, and received a postgraduate diploma in journalism from Cardiff University.

Career

Davies's career began with a short tenure as a sub-editor at the Western Mail in 1993. In the same year he joined the BBC as a news trainee, where he remained as a news reporter and producer until 1999.
Davies was head of regional programmes at BBC West in Bristol from 1999-2001, taking charge of BBC television, online and local radio services across the region. He left the BBC in 2001 to become director of TV at the newly launched Homechoice. In 2005 he was appointed head of TV marketing at the cable operator ntl.
In 2006 Davies returned to the BBC as head of strategy and communications. He was appointed director of BBC Cymru Wales in September 2011. In 2020, Davies led the opening of the BBC’s new broadcast centre at Central Square in Cardiff.
In December 2020 Davies was appointed as BBC Director of Nations, with responsibility for nations and local audiences in Scotland, Wales, England and Northern Ireland.