About Mark Thompson (media executive)
Sir Mark John Thompson is a British–American media executive who is Chairman of the Board of Directors of Ancestry, the largest for-profit genealogy company in the world, and CEO of CNN. He is the former president and CEO of The New York Times Company. From 2004 to 2012, he was Director-General of the BBC, and before that was the Chief Executive of Channel 4. In 2009 Thompson was ranked as the 65th most powerful person in the world by Forbes magazine. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2017. Thompson first joined the BBC as a production trainee in 1979. Two years later he was part of the team that created British television's first national breakfast television programme, Breakfast Time. He left BBC Two in 1999 and was replaced by Jane Root, who became the channel's first female Controller.
Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.