Background
She was born in Gatley, Stockport, Cheshire. Her father was an architect and her mother a medical secretary.
radio producer editor of Woman
She was born in Gatley, Stockport, Cheshire. Her father was an architect and her mother a medical secretary.
She attended Withington Girls" School. Sandra Chalmers then studied English at Victoria University of Manchester (now Manchester University), becoming president of the Women Students" Union.
She worked at the advertising agency J Walter Thompson in London, before starting to work regularly on radio in Manchester. In 1970 she became a senior producer, newsreader and host on the newly established station British Broadcasting Corporation Radio Manchester. Then, during the mid-1970s, she was appointed as manager of British Broadcasting Corporation Radio Stoke, becoming the first woman to manage a British Broadcasting Corporation local radio station.
In 1983 she was appointed editor of Woman"s Hour, the first mother of young children to edit the programme.
She was responsible for developing the use of phone-ins in the series. She had effectively been the single mother of young teenagers for some time." She created ‘lieutenant’s Your World’, a live phone-in radio show transmitted on both Radio 4 and the British Broadcasting Corporation World Service.
She left Woman"s Hour in 1987. In 1990, Sandy started the British Broadcasting Corporation’s Radio Press, Publicity and Promotions department, becoming its Head.
She created visitor attraction ‘The British Broadcasting Corporation Experience’ and was appointed General Manager, External Affairs, for British Broadcasting Corporation Radio.
She left the British Broadcasting Corporation in 1992. She later became Director of Communications at the charity Help the Aged, and ran her own public relations company, Chalmers Communications, which provided communications courses for Ofcom, the British Broadcasting Corporation and the Museum of London, among others In 1998, Sandy joined the Board of Governors of Benjamin Franklin House, a museum and educational facility in the world’s only remaining home of United States Founding Father, diplomat, philosopher, and scientist, Benjamin Franklin.
She served on the Board until 2010.
In 2000, Sandy helped establish Saga Radio, a network aimed at the over-50s which broadcast throughout the Midlands, Glasgow and on Dictionary of American Biography. She had her own record show on Saga Dictionary of American Biography Radio from 2000 to 2002. Personal Sandy married John Lynton-Evans, a writer, in September 1965 in Cheshire.
The couple divorced in the late 1980s. She was a Freeman of the City of London.
According to presenter Sue MacGregor, Chalmers "enlivened Woman’s Hour’s mix of the important, the frivolous, and the necessary: gender politics, women's health, recipes, book readings, interviews with noteworthy women – and childcare.