BBC COO Leigh Tavaziva To Exit As Leadership Upheaval Continues

EXCLUSIVE: Leigh Tavaziva, the BBC‘s chief operating officer, is stepping down amid continued leadership upheaval at the UK national broadcaster.

Per an internal email, Tavaziva has told employees that she will exit the BBC in September. She has worked at the corporation for the past five years, earning nearly £470,000 ($624,000).

Tavaziva is the third BBC board-level executive to quit in the past four months, following director-general Tim Davie and news chief Deborah Turness’ resignations last November over a bodged Donald Trump edit.

Tavaziva said: “After five brilliant years, I have taken the opportunity to reflect on my own role at the BBC and have decided that the time is right for me to leave to pursue new opportunities.

“I will be stepping down in September. It is a privilege and honour to work here and to have played my part, alongside you all, to ensure we deliver on the mission and purpose of an organisation that matters so much, and now more than ever.”

She continued: “I will be working closely with Rhodri Talfan Davies, as he takes over as interim director-general next month, to ensure we carefully manage this period of transition and support the new director-general when they begin.

“I do recognise the uncertainty many of you are facing with the changes we are announcing today – we will continue to keep you updated as our plans and proposals develop and to ensure that you have an opportunity to feedback and input into the work.”

Tavaziva added that Storm Fagan, chief product officer, has been appointed to the newly-created role of BBC chief technology and product officer, to lead a new unit, named BBC Media Tech.

Deadline revealed the plans for BBC Media Tech last year, and Tavaziva said it would “unite all our product and technology teams in public service with tech and product colleagues from BBC Studios into a single group team.” Sources said it could eventually be spun-off into an commercial division, housing the digital teams that power services including iPlayer and the BBC Sounds app.

The unit forms part of Project Ada, a BBC plan to save at least £100M ($132M) by radically reimagining its workforce to compete with tech giants.

Named after Ada Lovelace, the pioneering 19th-century British mathematician, the project could result in thousands of non-content jobs — including HR, finance, legal, and operations — being outsourced to private sector companies.