Woman's Hour Power List 2014 – Game Changers

With the final Power List meeting completed, how do our judges feel about the top ten Game Changers list? Emma Barnett, Reni Eddo-Lodge and Rachel Johnson reveal some of the emotion behind the list.

Chair of 2014's Power List, Emma Barnett, takes us through the latest deliberations for this year's top ten Game Changers. What is a Game Changer exactly? Who are the women who could be defined as a Game Changer - and what names have been discussed in the judges meeting? Featuring the people behind Magic Breakfast and Road Peace, plus judges Reni Eddo-Lodge, Heather Rabbatts, Liz Bingham and Rachel Johnson.

Lady Barbara Judge CBE has been a pioneer for women in the worlds of law, banking and business, and is known as one of the best connected women in Britain. She is Chairman Emerita of the UK Atomic Energy Authority and Chairman of the Pension Protection Fund. She talks to Jane about how to be taken seriously, her inspirational mother, and her views on how to be a working mother. .

Number 18 on our Woman's Hour Power List, Sara Thornton, Chief Constable of Thames Valley Police joins Jenni to talk about what drew her to policing 27 years ago, the changing culture for women officers in the force in that time, and in the light of the Oxford grooming case convictions earlier this year, the differences in the way rape and sexual assault cases are being dealt with in Thames Valley, and nationwide.

Marisa Drew works at Credit Suisse where she is the company’s most senior female investment banker in Europe, responsible for multi-billion pound deals. She talks to Jane Garvey about her career as an investment banker.

Lady Hale is Deputy President of the Supreme Court. Her role makes her the most senior female judge in British legal history and she remains the first and only woman to sit on the UK's highest court. Educated in the state school system, she won a state scholarship to Cambridge. The first woman to be appointed to the Law Commission, she spent ten years re-defining the face of family law – an area she specialised in. She has been an outspoken critic of the lack of women and diversity in the judiciary, particularly at the highest levels.

Louise Casey is Director General of the Troubled Families Unit, charged with helping some of the country’s most in need and vulnerable people. She has spent her career in social policy and has advised the Blair, Brown and Cameron Governments. She was the Director of the Home Office Anti Social Behaviour Unit and was the first Commissioner for Victims and Witnesses.

Helen Hamlyn is one of Britain's best known philanthropists. In 1984 her husband, the late publisher Paul Hamlyn gave her her own foundation for her 50th birthday - The Helen Hamlyn Trust. It supports the development of innovative projects which effect lasting change and improve lives.

Woman's Hour Power Lister Pinky Lilani on the importance of making connections with others.

Ann is the daughter of a Newcastle shoemaker, became one of the first women to be qualified to work on offshore oil and gas rigs and, after a successful career in banking, she now works at the finance company MasterCard where she manages a staff of 4000.

Mary Curnock Cook, Chief Executive of UCAS.

Dame Professor Carol Black is the country’s leading expert adviser on health and work. The principal of Newnham College Cambridge, she was a consultant rheumatologist and a former President of the Royal College of Physicians. However, she started out in medicine as working class grammar school girl with a third class degree in history...

Dido Harding has been the CEO of TalkTalk Group for just over three years, having previously worked for top retailers like Sainsburys and Tesco. She’s keen to make sure that her workforce is as diverse as possible and wants to see more women running companies not necessarily on their boards. The former amateur jockey and mother of two tells us what it’s like to juggle family life with life as a chief exec. .

Professor Sue Bailey talks about her work as a child and adolescent forensic psychiatrist.

Dame Julie Moore is Chief Executive of University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust. She spent ten years in clinical practice before moving into nursing management. She became a director of Leeds Teaching Hospitals Trust in 1998. In 2002 she moved to Birmingham, taking up her current post in 2006. She received a DBE for services to healthcare in 2011. She joins Jenni to talk about her career, the night Malala Yousafzai was admitted to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital and being partnered with trusts in special measures.

Assistant Commissioner Cressida Dick serves as the most senior female officer within the Metropolitan Police, a rank equivalent to that of Chief Constable outside London. During the Olympic and Paralympic games, she was national director for counter terrorism, an extension of her role leading on the long-term threat of terrorism across the UK. A trained hostage negotiator, she has extensive experience in public order, firearms and security. In 2005, she was the officer in charge of the operation which led to the fatal shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes. A jury cleared her of blame at the end of the prosecution of the Metropolitan Police under health and safety laws. Three years ago she was awarded the Queen’s Police Medal.

Clare Gerada is a GP and Chair of the Council of the Royal College of General Practitioners, a position she holds until November. A vocal defender of the NHS, she sprang to prominence as a leading voice in the opposition to the coalition government’s reorganisation of the NHS in England. Early this year she was named as one of Woman’s Hour’s 100 most powerful women in the UK. She talks to Jane Garvey about the role, her medical career and what power means to her.

Philanthropist Dame Vivien Duffield inherited a vast fortune in 1979 after the death of her father Sir Charles Clore, the retail tycoon who owned Selfridges, and became Chair of the Clore Foundation. In 2000 she merged this with her own organisation to produce the Clore Duffield Foundation. She is thought to have given over £200 million to charity projects.

Since becoming an MP, Yvette Cooper has been tipped for high office, becoming the first female Chief Secretary to the Treasury in Tony Blair’s government. She was also the first minister to take maternity leave and with husband Ed Balls, was part of the first married couple to sit in Cabinet. Jane Garvey joined the Shadow Home Secretary and Woman’s Hour Powerlister in her West Yorkshire constituency to talk about ambition, the two Eds, and her battle with civil servants whom she felt excluded her while she was a Minister on maternity leave.

Lady Justice Arden sits on the Court of Appeal and is the UK's second most senior female judge. Twenty years ago she was the first woman to be appointed to the High Court’s Chancery Division, then the first woman to chair the Law Commission. In 2000 she became only the third woman to join the judicial ranks in the Court of Appeal. However women still represent just 16% of Appeal Court judges, with only one female out of twelve justices on the UK Supreme Court. Mary Arden is currently Head of International Judicial Relations for England and Wales and is a member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague. Earlier this year she was named in the Woman's Hour Power List.

Harriet Harman, Labour's deputy leader and Power Lister, talks to Jane Garvey from the party's annual conference about her life in politics.

Jasmine Whitbread, the chief executive of Save the Children International, left her highly paid job in the commercial sector to work in the voluntary sector. She discusses what motivated her move and why she thinks a job is not worth doing unless it's scary.

Dame Stephanie “Steve” Shirley is a philanthropist and The Shirley Foundation is one of the top 50 grant-giving foundations in Britain. She arrived in Britain on the Kinderstransport in 1939, aged five. In 1962, she founded her first software company and went by the name “Steve” to open doors in the male-dominated business world. She retired in 1993 with an estimated £150 million fortune. Dame Stephanie now concentrates on philanthropic work and donates to autism research.

Professor Dame Sally Davies is the Chief Medical Officer for England and the first woman to fill this post. She guides government decisions on diverse subjects such as superbugs, drug trials and obesity. She is also number 6 on the Woman’s Hour Power List.

Karren Brady is well known as the right hand woman to Sir Alan Sugar on TV’s The Apprentice, and also as a formidable force in business – standing out not only as a huge success, but also as a woman in the undeniably male world of football. She started her 20 year career in football when she was appointed Managing Director of Birmingham City Football Club aged only 23, and took the club from administration to sell it for an incredible £82 million. Now she’s Vice Chairman of West Ham.

How to be a Powerful Woman - a series of Woman's Hour Power List films are launched in this live programme, presented by Jane Garvey, from the Radio Theatre at Broadcasting House. Artist Tracey Emin, paralympian and Life Peer Tanni Grey Thompson, Liberty Director Shami Chakrabarti and MOBO's Kanya King are some of the powerlisters featured in the films. They share their experiences, advice and philosophy for a successful working life. In the programme we'll take a look at some of the barriers women still face in the workplace. We'll examine how to raise girls' aspirations so they choose the careers they really want - not just jobs that will fit in with family responsibilities. We'll also look at the changes needed to enable more women to reach senior positions. And we'll discuss how women can keep their careers buoyant and fulfilling as they juggle work and home life

Sophie Turner Laing is the Managing Director, Content of BskyB. She’s responsible for their entertainment and news channels including the likes of Sky 1 and Atlantic. As one of the 100 most powerful women on the Woman’s Hour Power List - she joins Jenni to talk about what it’s really like working in TV, the myth of the work-life balance, and why it’s important to realise that you don’t need to know everything. .

Ann Widdecombe, fines for unmarried mothers in China, US author Curtis Sittenfeld and the proposed anti-social behaviour bill.

Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson reveals how life as a top athlete helped her prepare for the rough and tumble of politics and how she manages to persuade her 11 year old daughter to sit quietly through House of Lords debates.

Joanna Lumley is best known as the champagne-swilling fashion luvvie Patsy in the television series Absolutely Fabulous. However, alongside acting she is also known for her modelling, charitable work, and as a rights campaigner. She famously campaigned to allow Gurkha veterans to settle in the UK, and now she is backing a sustainable fashion initiative, run in partnership with Oxfam. She is an influential woman in British life, and so in February our panel of judges included her in our Woman's Hour Power List. Joanna joins Jane to talk about sustainable fashion, carving out an influential career as a woman, and her views on women, power and feminism.

Helena Morrissey is the Chief Executive of her own investment company and the founder of the 30 per cent club, and a Woman's Hour Powerlister. She commented on the latest research by the Cranfield School of Management about women on boards.

Dame Sue Ion has spent her life working in engineering. She’s been involved in shaping the UK’s energy policy for the future and been a prominent figure in the UK nuclear industry for decades. Her love for science began at Penwortham Girls’ High School which she shared with her classmate Dame Nancy Rothwell, who is also on the Woman’s Hour Powerlist. Sheila McClennon took Sue Ion back to her old school for the first time in thirty years.

Lucy Heller is the Chief Executive of ARK, an organisation that oversee the running of 18 academies in disadvantaged communities throughout the UK. She is responsible for a model of education which is currently driving current government education policy. Lucy joins Jenni to talk about being nominated for the Woman’s Hour Power List, the ethos that she believes makes her schools so successful and if being a woman in a such senior position is relevant in her day to day work life.

Baroness Sue Campbell has been Chair of UK Sport for ten years now. Also Chair of Youth Sport, a former England netball international, PE teacher and university lecturer, Sue's whole life has been dedicated to sport. She joins Jane to talk about the legacy of London 2012 for women in sport, being nominated for the Woman’s Hour Power List and how her sports training has given her the resilience to deal with some tough challenges in her career.

Nicola Shindler started her career in 1993 at Granada Television and eventually became script editor on crime drama Cracker. She went on to become an Assistant Producer on the BBC’s Our Friends in the North and then in 1998, she founded one of Britain’s foremost independent TV production companies, Red Production. Their output – which has included Queer as Folk, Scott and Bailey and Last Tango in Halifax – has won many awards from BAFTA and the Royal Television Society and Nicola Shindler is now one of the most influential people in TV drama in the UK.

Frances O’Grady took up her post as the General Secretary of the Trade Union Congress last month, the first woman to hold that post in its 145 year history. Last week the panel for the Woman’s Hour Power List ranked her 11th on their list. Frances talks to Samira about her life, career and influences.

Jenni interviews Tessa Ross, Controller of Film and Drama at Channel 4 who is on the Woman's Hour power list.

Home Secretary Theresa May has been named by the Power List judges as the most powerful woman in politics in Britain today. Overall she was only pipped to the number one slot by Her Majesty The Queen. Today Jenni talks to the woman who holds one of the most challenging jobs in government and asks, what does power mean to her? .

Heather Rabbatts, the first woman director of the Football Association, joins Jane to talk about her place on the Woman’s Hour power list.

Over the past couple of months Eve Pollard and her team of judges – Priti Patel MP, Val McDermid, Dawn O’Porter, Baroness Oona King and the former Woman’s Hour editor, Jill Burridge, have been making their decisions and today we bring you the second selection of their deliberations as they debated the relative influence of some of the women you nominated. We join the panel as they discuss women who influence our cultural life.

Over the past couple of months Eve Pollard and her team of judges – Priti Patel MP, Val McDermid, Dawn O’Porter, Baroness Oona King and the former Woman’s Hour editor, Jill Burridge, have been making their decisions. Here is a selection of their deliberations as they debated the relative influence of some of the women you nominated, an they wrestle with defining what power is.

Jenni Murray interviews Angela Merkel's biographer Margaret Heckel about Merkel's life and legacy.

What is the best way for women to engage in the political process – march and shout loudly or engage in subtle targeted persuasion? Journalist Laurie Penny and Charlotte Vere, founder of Women On, a campaign group for women in the economy, discuss.

As the Woman's Hour Power List judges consider who the most powerful women in the UK are at the start of 2013, we take a look at the women who will come to prominence as the year progresses. Jenni speaks to Emma Barnett, women’s editor of the Daily Telegraph and Helen Lewis, deputy editor of the New Statesman.

The 80s was the decade associated with power dressing. But what would a 21st century woman choose to wear for success?

Do women have an effective equivalent of the old boys’ network? And is it possible to name our power list without the advantage of hindsight?

It was Lord Acton, the British historian, who said: “All power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Is it possible to become powerful and still be the same person you once were? Margaret Beckett, Labour MP for Derby South, and journalist, Nina Myskow,explore the nature of power, and its affect on those who find themselves at the top.

If we were making a global power list, who would be on it? Angela Merkel and Hilary Clinton are a given. Who are the rest? Jenni is joined by Paola Totaro; vice president of the Foreign Press Association in London and by Baroness Glenys Kinnock; a former MEP.

Why do we give celebrities such power, and how seriously should celebrities take their status as role models? Jenni is joined by Myleene Klass, musician, presenter and model, and by Dan Wootton, showbiz journalist.

Which women have the biggest impact on our economy, society, politics & culture? Eve Pollard talks to Jenni about the Woman's Hour Powerlist and Anne McElvoy and Julia Hobsbawm discuss what power means.