Chairman & Co-Founder of Teliris
Chairman, NICE TV
Chairman and Founder of YouthNet UK
Chairman, The Beacon Fellowship Trust
Former TV reporter and news anchor

Over 32 years as a TV journalist, Martyn Lewis built up a reputation as one of Britain's best known TV anchormen and reporters, before taking up a business career. He is now Chairman and Co-Founder of Teliris, which has pioneered a highly advanced form of realtime, DVD-quality video-conferencing used by many global blue-chip companies; and Chairman of NICE TV, providing high quality bespoke news programmes for major events and conferences. He continues to chair conferences and debates in the corporate, medical and charitable sectors.

In his broadcasting career, he became the first news presenter to anchor all the flagship news programmes on Britain’s two main TV channels – the BBC and ITV – and presented special live programmes on major events including the start of the first Gulf War and the death of the Princess of Wales. He also wrote and produced the best-selling 2-hour ITV video on the Falklands War – “Battle for the Falklands”. “And Finally…..”, the recent book on the history of Independent Television News, describes him as “simply one of the best news story film-makers ITN ever employed”.

His charitable work includes the Chairmanship of YouthNet UK, a charity he founded in 1995 to create a comprehensive internet site signposting young people to every conceivable opportunity or form of help they might need(www.thesite.org) It has over 16,000 organisations on its database, stretching right down to community level across the UK, and is accessed by over 400,000 young people every month. YouthNet has also created the personalized advice service www.askthesite.org, and the UK’s national volunteering database - www.do-it.org.uk, listing and regularly updating some 700,000 volunteering opportunities across the country.

In 2005 Martyn became Chairman of the Beacon Fellowship Trust, a charity set up to encourage individual contributions to charitable and social causes and to celebrate and showcase best practice in giving. (www.beaconfellowship.org.uk)

He has been closely involved with the Hospice movement for over 20 years, and is a Vice-President of the three main national hospice charities – Help The Hospices, Marie Curie Cancer Care and Macmillan Cancer Relief – as well as many individual hospices.
He regularly chairs Hospice conferences and Marie Curie’s fund-raising “Brain Games”.
Other charity involvement includes : President of United Response, providing homes and work in the community for people with learning disabilities, a Trustee of the Windsor Leadership Trust, helping develop the leaders of tomorrow, and a regular judge for the Dragon Awards, honouring companies based in the City of London for their work in helping the community.

He is the author of six books, ranging from the humorous bestseller “Cats in the News” to “Tears and Smiles – The Hospice Handbook”, the first layman’s guide to the British Hospice movement, and “Reflections On Success” for which he interviewed 67 famous achievers from all walks of life.

In 1994, Martyn made the news himself with two controversial and widely-debated speeches arguing for a shift in the agenda of TV news programmes to achieve a fairer balance between the positive and the negative, in order to report and analyse achievement just as much as failure and disaster. He still debates the issues in forums around the world.

He holds an honorary doctorate from the University of Ulster and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and a Member of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts. He was awarded a CBE in 1997.

Martyn believes passionately that the WLT has a unique role to play in helping to shape the leaders of tomorrow. He chairs the annual lecture at which a prominent leader is questioned by an audience of 500 guests.