Sonita Alleyne

Sonita Alleyne OBE, FRSA (born 1968, Bridgetown, Barbados) is the co-founder and former CEO of Somethin’ Else, one of Britain's leading cross-platform media production companies. Alleyne is a member of the BBC Trust, the governing body of the British Broadcasting Corporation.

Alleyne was born in Bridgetown, Barbados, and brought up in Leytonstone, East London. Having attended Leyton Senior High School for Girls, she matriculated at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge in 1985. While an undergraduate, she helped organise the college Spring Ball and sang in a jazz band with Henry Gee, later a Senior Editor of Nature. In 1988, she graduated with a BA in Philosophy and began working as a financial adviser for Royal Life. A year later she joined Jazz FM's publicity department and, in her two years at the station, proceeded to become a trainee producer.

After being made redundant in 1991, Alleyne set up Somethin' Else, a music publicity business (named after the landmark jazz album by Cannonball Adderley), with former colleagues Jez Nelson and Chris Philips. The company quickly expanded and began producing original content for the BBC and commercial radio. As CEO, Alleyne led many projects herself, including the development of Radio Music Shop, the world's first retail radio station. By 2008, Somethin’ Else was, according to The Independent, ‘the biggest syndicator of radio programmes in the UK, outside of the BBC, distributing shows to more than 200 radio stations in 65 countries’.

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