Waheed Alli, Baron Alli

Waheed Alli, Baron Alli (born 16 November 1964) is a British media entrepreneur and politician. He is the co-creator of the television series Survivor and has held executive positions at several television production companies including the Endemol Shine Group, Carlton Television Productions (now ITV Studios), Planet 24, and Chorion. He served as the Chief Executive of Silvergate Media until 2022, Chairman of Koovs Plc and a director at Olga Productions. He is a member of the House of Lords in the United Kingdom, sitting as a life peer for the Labour Party, and is described as one of only a few openly gay Muslim politicians in the world. In British political terms he is considered Asian, because both of his parents are Indo-Caribbean. His mother, a nurse, is an Indo-Trinidadian from Trinidad and Tobago, and his estranged father, a mechanic, is an Indo-Guyanese from Guyana. His mother was Hindu and his father Muslim; he has two brothers, one Hindu and the other Muslim. He was named one of the 20 most important Asians in British media in 2005. At the same time, he maintains ties with his Caribbean roots, both with other British-Guyanese politicians such as Valerie Amos and Trevor Phillips, and with President Bharrat Jagdeo. He is one of a group of highly successful Guyanese people in Britain (Michael White of The Guardian refers to them as the "Guyanese mafia"), which includes Raj Persaud, Herman Ouseley and David Dabydeen, Cynthia Pine, Keith Waithe and Rudolph Dunbar. Alli attended Stanley Technical College in South Norwood and left school at 16 with nine O-levels. Alli started work as a junior researcher for a finance magazine, crediting his first success to Salem Ghayar, who hired and mentored him. After a few years of preparing monthly reports for potential investors, he was headhunted by Save & Prosper, part of Robert Fleming & Co. Eventually he returned to his original employer, and worked his way up in the media business within Robert Maxwell's stable of publications.