Executive Chairman, YouGovStone

Carole Stone is a consultant, networker, author and freelance broadcaster. She spent 27 years at the BBC, starting as a newsroom secretary and eventually becoming producer of Radio 4's flagship discussion show Any Questions? for ten years until 1990. Since leaving the BBC, she has worked as a freelance journalist and broadcaster and as a self-employed media consultant to chairmen and chief executives of major British companies. She is the author of "Networking: The Art of Making Friends" and "The Ultimate Guide to Successful Networking".

In April 2007 Carole became Managing Director of YouGovStone Ltd, a joint venture with the online market research agency YouGov plc, where she established the YouGovStone ThinkTank - a global panel of over 4000 people who are leaders in their field. YouGovStone carries out opinion research surveys both online and face-to-face. In May 2009 she formed TheStoneClub - a private members club, part social, part business, where members meet to discuss social issues that concern us all - what she calls a 'meeting of minds'.Carole sold YouGovStone Ltd to YouGov in June 2011 and is now its Executive Chairman.

In August 2011 Carole was shortlisted as Best-Connected Woman in British Business by Director and O2. She is an elected governor of the Tavistock & Portman NHS Foundation Trust; patron of two mental health charities, SANE and Triumph over Phobia; a patron of the Facial Surgery Research Foundation, Saving Faces; a partner in the debating forum Intelligence Squared; a Counsellor for One Young World and a member of the Appeals Committee for Combat Stress, The Enemy Within.