The appointment caused criticism from the public after Phillips was suspended from the Labour party earlier in the year over allegations of Islamophobia.
He is the current chair of Green Park after finding at the start of this year that none of the FTSE 100 companies had black directors holding top roles for the first time in six years.
Phillips was previously the head current affairs at LWT, a division of ITV, and won Royal Television Society awards for journalism in 1988 and 1993.
He also won the documentary series prize in 1998 for a four-part programme marking 50 years since the MV Empire Windrush arrived in Britain.
Phillips was born in London in 1953 but he attended Queen’s College in Georgetown, Guyana.
