The Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) obviously thinks it's on to a winner with broadcasters.
When looking for a replacement for chairwoman Liz Forgan, a former managing director of BBC Radio, it turned to Jenny Abramsky, someone who has spent her whole working life at the BBC.
But apart from their shared experience in broadcasting, Abramsky and Forgan appear quite different people. The smartly dressed Forgan, who is now the chairwoman of Arts Council England, looks far more like a BBC executive and was educated at an upper-class boarding school and then Oxford University.
By contrast, Abramsky, who joined the HLF in October 2008, attended a London comprehensive, albeit a very middle class one, and then went to the University of East Anglia. She is far more informal than Forgan and will happily put her feet up on a table during a meeting.
Abramsky says her interest in heritage started early and came from her parents, particularly her father, the historian Chimen Abramsky, who is an expert on ancient Hebrew manuscripts and emeritus professor at University College London.
"My father was an immigrant from Russia in the 30s and my parents had relatives who came from all over the world," Abramsky says. "They would come to London and my father would take them on an evening journey to see the sights in the days when there was not that much traffic.
"One of the first places he would always go was where the first matchgirls' strike was - he would take you on a socialist history of London."
Abramsky says her parents took her to museums and galleries from a very early age. She remembers visiting museums in Paris and Italy, while, closer to home, the family regularly went to Kenwood House, the English Heritage property on the edge of Hampstead Heath in north London.
"I can close my eyes and tell you what pictures there were in every single room," Abramsky says. "I absolutely loved it."
She was also influenced by a first cousin, the Marxist historian Raphael Samuel. "He was one of the people who invented the oral history tradition. He was 12 years my senior and I absolutely adored him. He instilled in me the value of ordinary people's stories in history."
Abramsky's career at the BBC started in 1969 as a radio trainee. She went on to edit the Today programme and to launch Radio Five Live, BBC News Online and BBC News 24.
When she left in 2008, she was the director of BBC Audio and Music, with responsibility for all BBC national radio networks, digital radio, and music across television, radio, online and live events.
She believes her experience at the BBC is relevant to her role at the HLF. "I came from an organisation that really valued excellence and deeply, deeply cared about serving the public.
"And there is the recognition that the whole of the public pay for it, which is also true of the lottery, and this means you have the obligation to give something back to as many people as you possibly can."
But she claims no specific experience of working in the heritage sector: "I have absolutely no expertise, and one of the things I said when I applied to be chair was that I am a consumer, I am the person that you want this money to benefit, so I am looking at it from that perspective."
Abramsky has spent much of her first year busying herself getting to know the sector by visiting heritage projects all over the UK. So far, she has been impressed by two National Trust properties: Tyntesfield for its conservation work and the Birmingham Back to Backs for the lively way it tells its stories.
She is also a fan of the National Gallery of Scotland in Edinburgh, the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford and the redeveloped Whitechapel in London.
"When my father first came to London in 1932 he lived three streets away from the Whitechapel and I was talking to him before the reopening of the gallery and he was saying that was where he was introduced to [David] Bomberg and a number of other artists. And there they all were when I went to the reopening."
Abramsky needs to be a fast learner as the HLF is facing challenging times now the amount it has to distribute has fallen from a high of £320m in 2004 to £180m a year.
The reduction is because £161.2m in lottery money has been diverted to the London Olympics as well as changes to the way it commits money and the redistribution of interest on lottery balances.
Having less money to give away means the HLF is having think hard about its funding priorities. "Money is incredibly tight and therefore we are turning down projects that previously would undoubtedly have got funded. At almost every meeting I have chaired, we have had to say no to things we would have loved to have supported and it is tough."
But Abramsky argues that £180m is still a lot of money and can have a real impact, particularly in a recession. She says one of the things she had not realised before joining the HLF was the impact small grants can make on community projects.
"We tend to see all the very big grants but a huge proportion of HLF's money has gone on small grants and the difference that can make to a community has been one of the things that has really surprised me."
She is also very keen on the training schemes that the HLF funds, such as its Training Bursary Programme and Skills for the Future, which was launched in July.
"I have been quite a driving force behind that and very early on I asked the question: 'How many jobs have we created?' and I don't think we know the answer and I think we should know the answer.
"In the future we will create new jobs, we will sustain jobs that are already there, we will create opportunities for volunteers and we will create short-term training opportunities, which seems to me to be of great value."
As for other priorities, new ways to help museums acquire objects could be something that the HLF looks at again. Collecting Cultures, the £3m scheme that included money for acquisitions, was supposed to be a one-off.
But the HLF is currently assessing its effectiveness and Abramsky does not rule out doing something similar: "How sustainable it is going to be for us to continue doing things like Collecting Cultures is one of the challenges. But if the response to something like that says it was very successful what are the ways we respond to that? This seems to me to be an important issue."
Another area she is keen on is maritime heritage and she thinks the UK needs to develop some kind of strategy for its future. "Much of this country's wealth was founded on trade, and therefore its maritime history is part of the essence of what this country is today.
"One of the things that has surprised me is that I don't have a sense of a real maritime heritage strategy that is all-encompassing, that looks at the ports and towns and the shipwrecks and the ships."
Abramsky says such a strategy would help the HLF to make informed decisions about what areas of maritime heritage to fund. The HLF is celebrating its 15th anniversary at the end of November and it's almost impossible to imagine how the UK's museums would have coped without its huge injection of funds.
Since 1994, it has supported nearly 29,000 projects, allocating more than £4.3bn across the UK. But Abramsky is keen to look forward.
"I don't think that we have sufficiently got across to politicians, but also to the wider public, the importance and the benefit that heritage brings to society. When you go and talk to people on the ground they absolutely know why something is of value to their community.
"We have to constantly be making the case for why heritage matters and I do think that we need to make that case stronger. I believe that heritage is absolutely about the future, not just the past."
Jenny Abramsky has spent her whole career at the BBC, having joined the organisation in 1969 as a radio trainee. During her time there she has been the editor of the Today programme on Radio 4 as well as launching Radio Five Live, BBC News Online and BBC News 24.
As director of BBC Audio and Music, she was responsible for all BBC national radio networks, digital radio and music across television, radio, online and live events. She was awarded a CBE for services to broadcasting in 2001.
She joined the Heritage Lottery Fund as chairwoman in October 2008. Abramsky was educated at Holland Park Comprehensive School in west London and then went to the University of East Anglia. She was born in 1946.
When looking for a replacement for chairwoman Liz Forgan, a former managing director of BBC Radio, it turned to Jenny Abramsky, someone who has spent her whole working life at the BBC.
But apart from their shared experience in broadcasting, Abramsky and Forgan appear quite different people. The smartly dressed Forgan, who is now the chairwoman of Arts Council England, looks far more like a BBC executive and was educated at an upper-class boarding school and then Oxford University.
By contrast, Abramsky, who joined the HLF in October 2008, attended a London comprehensive, albeit a very middle class one, and then went to the University of East Anglia. She is far more informal than Forgan and will happily put her feet up on a table during a meeting.
Abramsky says her interest in heritage started early and came from her parents, particularly her father, the historian Chimen Abramsky, who is an expert on ancient Hebrew manuscripts and emeritus professor at University College London.
"My father was an immigrant from Russia in the 30s and my parents had relatives who came from all over the world," Abramsky says. "They would come to London and my father would take them on an evening journey to see the sights in the days when there was not that much traffic.
"One of the first places he would always go was where the first matchgirls' strike was - he would take you on a socialist history of London."
Abramsky says her parents took her to museums and galleries from a very early age. She remembers visiting museums in Paris and Italy, while, closer to home, the family regularly went to Kenwood House, the English Heritage property on the edge of Hampstead Heath in north London.
"I can close my eyes and tell you what pictures there were in every single room," Abramsky says. "I absolutely loved it."
She was also influenced by a first cousin, the Marxist historian Raphael Samuel. "He was one of the people who invented the oral history tradition. He was 12 years my senior and I absolutely adored him. He instilled in me the value of ordinary people's stories in history."
Abramsky's career at the BBC started in 1969 as a radio trainee. She went on to edit the Today programme and to launch Radio Five Live, BBC News Online and BBC News 24.
When she left in 2008, she was the director of BBC Audio and Music, with responsibility for all BBC national radio networks, digital radio, and music across television, radio, online and live events.
She believes her experience at the BBC is relevant to her role at the HLF. "I came from an organisation that really valued excellence and deeply, deeply cared about serving the public.
"And there is the recognition that the whole of the public pay for it, which is also true of the lottery, and this means you have the obligation to give something back to as many people as you possibly can."
But she claims no specific experience of working in the heritage sector: "I have absolutely no expertise, and one of the things I said when I applied to be chair was that I am a consumer, I am the person that you want this money to benefit, so I am looking at it from that perspective."
Abramsky has spent much of her first year busying herself getting to know the sector by visiting heritage projects all over the UK. So far, she has been impressed by two National Trust properties: Tyntesfield for its conservation work and the Birmingham Back to Backs for the lively way it tells its stories.
She is also a fan of the National Gallery of Scotland in Edinburgh, the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford and the redeveloped Whitechapel in London.
"When my father first came to London in 1932 he lived three streets away from the Whitechapel and I was talking to him before the reopening of the gallery and he was saying that was where he was introduced to [David] Bomberg and a number of other artists. And there they all were when I went to the reopening."
Abramsky needs to be a fast learner as the HLF is facing challenging times now the amount it has to distribute has fallen from a high of £320m in 2004 to £180m a year.
The reduction is because £161.2m in lottery money has been diverted to the London Olympics as well as changes to the way it commits money and the redistribution of interest on lottery balances.
Having less money to give away means the HLF is having think hard about its funding priorities. "Money is incredibly tight and therefore we are turning down projects that previously would undoubtedly have got funded. At almost every meeting I have chaired, we have had to say no to things we would have loved to have supported and it is tough."
But Abramsky argues that £180m is still a lot of money and can have a real impact, particularly in a recession. She says one of the things she had not realised before joining the HLF was the impact small grants can make on community projects.
"We tend to see all the very big grants but a huge proportion of HLF's money has gone on small grants and the difference that can make to a community has been one of the things that has really surprised me."
She is also very keen on the training schemes that the HLF funds, such as its Training Bursary Programme and Skills for the Future, which was launched in July.
"I have been quite a driving force behind that and very early on I asked the question: 'How many jobs have we created?' and I don't think we know the answer and I think we should know the answer.
"In the future we will create new jobs, we will sustain jobs that are already there, we will create opportunities for volunteers and we will create short-term training opportunities, which seems to me to be of great value."
As for other priorities, new ways to help museums acquire objects could be something that the HLF looks at again. Collecting Cultures, the £3m scheme that included money for acquisitions, was supposed to be a one-off.
But the HLF is currently assessing its effectiveness and Abramsky does not rule out doing something similar: "How sustainable it is going to be for us to continue doing things like Collecting Cultures is one of the challenges. But if the response to something like that says it was very successful what are the ways we respond to that? This seems to me to be an important issue."
Another area she is keen on is maritime heritage and she thinks the UK needs to develop some kind of strategy for its future. "Much of this country's wealth was founded on trade, and therefore its maritime history is part of the essence of what this country is today.
"One of the things that has surprised me is that I don't have a sense of a real maritime heritage strategy that is all-encompassing, that looks at the ports and towns and the shipwrecks and the ships."
Abramsky says such a strategy would help the HLF to make informed decisions about what areas of maritime heritage to fund. The HLF is celebrating its 15th anniversary at the end of November and it's almost impossible to imagine how the UK's museums would have coped without its huge injection of funds.
Since 1994, it has supported nearly 29,000 projects, allocating more than £4.3bn across the UK. But Abramsky is keen to look forward.
"I don't think that we have sufficiently got across to politicians, but also to the wider public, the importance and the benefit that heritage brings to society. When you go and talk to people on the ground they absolutely know why something is of value to their community.
"We have to constantly be making the case for why heritage matters and I do think that we need to make that case stronger. I believe that heritage is absolutely about the future, not just the past."
Jenny Abramsky at a glance
Jenny Abramsky has spent her whole career at the BBC, having joined the organisation in 1969 as a radio trainee. During her time there she has been the editor of the Today programme on Radio 4 as well as launching Radio Five Live, BBC News Online and BBC News 24.
As director of BBC Audio and Music, she was responsible for all BBC national radio networks, digital radio and music across television, radio, online and live events. She was awarded a CBE for services to broadcasting in 2001.
She joined the Heritage Lottery Fund as chairwoman in October 2008. Abramsky was educated at Holland Park Comprehensive School in west London and then went to the University of East Anglia. She was born in 1946.