Ben Summerskill
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Ben Summerskill OBE |
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Giving a speech at the Stonewall awards, November 2011
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| Born |
Ben Jeffrey Peter Summerskill 6 October 1961 (age 55) Kent, England |
| Residence | London, England |
| Nationality | British |
| Education |
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| Alma mater | Merton College, Oxford |
| Occupation | |
| Years active | 1987–present |
| Title | Chief executive of Stonewall (2003–14) |
| Predecessor | Angela Mason (1992–2002) |
| Successor | Ruth Hunt 2014- |
Ben Jeffrey Peter Summerskill OBE (born 6 October 1961 in Kent) is Director of the Criminal Justice Alliance, a consortium of 110 organisations working across the GB criminal justice pathway. He was the Chief Executive of the UK-based lesbian, gay and bisexual equality organisation Stonewall, the largest gay equality body in Europe, from 2003 to 2014. He has a lesbian twin sister, Clare, who is a performer. He has also worked as a businessman and journalist. Ben Summerskill is an occasional contributor to The Guardian, The Independent on Sunday, The Observer, The Times, Time Out and other publications. In 2015 he won a Lifetime Achievement Award at the British LGBT Awards In 2017 he was appointed a trustee of the Silver Line.
Summerskill was educated at Cobden Road Infants School, Amherst County Primary School, Sevenoaks School, where he held a scholarship, and Merton College, Oxford, where he was an Exhibitioner (holder of a junior scholarship) but which he left after two years without taking a degree. He later wrote in The Guardian: "I still recall being struck dumb on being shown, as an undergraduate, a note from an Oxford tutor to a successful candidate's father: 'Many thanks for lunch, and the trip in the Rolls.'"
His first career was in the restaurant trade. He was Operations Director from 1987 to 1990 with Kennedy Brookes, by then a publicly quoted hospitality company, responsible for 300 staff and an £18m turnover at the age of 26. Becoming a journalist in 1990, he rose to the position of Assistant Editor of The Observer newspaper which he joined in 2000 after having worked with Peter Hitchens and Peter Oborne as Media Editor for Daily Express editor Rosie Boycott, and the London Evening Standard under editor and mentor Max Hastings and other magazines.
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