Who is Tony Danker, the CBI boss who has stepped aside?

A former Government advisor turned business champion, Tony Danker took over leadership of the Confederation of British Industry from its first ever female boss during the pandemic.

As director general of the CBI he has since championed green investment and the inclusion of women at the top of the workplace, as well as reform of the UK’s expensive child care system.

Speaking just last week Mr Danker said that the cost of a part-time place in a nursery shot up by 60% between 2010 and 2021, holding back parents who would otherwise be in the workplace. It is a problem that especially impacts women.

“The UK Needs a childcare revolution. We simply can no longer trail other countries in enabling parents to work,” he said.

Before joining the CBI in 2020, Mr Danker led the non-profit organisation Be the Business which was set up as a collaboration between the Chancellor and some of the biggest companies in Britain.

The organisation aimed to supply training and support to small and medium-sized business leaders.

Like his predecessor Carolyn Fairbairn, Mr Danker spent a significant chunk of his career working in the media sector.

He spent seven years from 2010 to 2017 as chief strategy officer at Guardian News & Media – the company behind the newspaper of the same name. He led work on growing the newspaper abroad and worked on the restructuring of the business.

It followed a career which included two years as a policy advisor in the Cabinet Office and the Treasury under Gordon Brown’s premiership, and a decade a consultancy McKinsey & Co.

He was educated at the Universities of Manchester and Harvard.