It has been announced that Prince William’s Earthshot Prize has appointed Jason Knauf – who recently gave a bombshell TV interview about his time working at Kensington Palace – as its new CEO
Prince William’s Earthshot Prize has handed a top job to his former royal aide who was at the centre of the Meghan Markle bullying claims. It has been revealed that Jason Knauf has now been appointed the CEO of the Earthshot Prize, as former executive Hannah Jones has decided to step down from the position after four years leading the environmental project.
Mr Knauf previously worked at Kensington Palace for both Prince Harry and Meghan, as well as the Prince and Princess of Wales, as their communications secretary. He hit headlines when it emerged he made a bullying complaint against Meghan – emailing his concerns to William’s then-private secretary, in an apparent attempt to force Buckingham Palace to protect staff. Meghan has always strenuously denied the allegations, with her team branding them a “calculated smear campaign”.
He was formerly chief executive of William and Kate’s Royal Foundation, stepping down at the end of 2021 and helped oversee the launch of the Foundation’s Earthshot Prize – William’s £50 million environmental prize, now an independent charity, which recognises solutions, ideas and technologies that “repair the planet”.
The future king is the driving force behind the annual environmental competition, which staged its last awards ceremony in Cape Town in November, after prize-giving events were held in Singapore in 2023, Boston in 2022 and the inaugural event at London’s Alexandra Palace in 2021.
Speaking about the change, William, who is also president of the Earthshot Prize, said: “As the first CEO, Hannah has built The Prize into a world -class organisation with an incredible team delivering an annual Prize, powering a platform for speeding solutions to scale and catalysing a movement to encourage young people, spark imaginations and infuse urgent optimism across the world.
“As we look ahead to the future of The Prize and the urgent work needed to scale more inspiring solutions to the world’s greatest challenges, I look forward to working with Jason to chart the course for the next five years of The Earthshot Prize and beyond.”
Mr Knauf’s appointment comes just weeks after he gave a rare public interview where he broke his silence on the Meghan bullying row and the media storm. Speaking on 60 Minutes Australia, he explained how he wouldn’t “change anything”.
He explained: “I think it, it’s tough, but it’s probably quite good. You know someone who has been helping other people through how to deal with the public eye. You probably had to take your own medicine sometimes.
“You can’t choose just to take the fun stuff in any job. And that applies to the Prince and Princess [of Wales] as well as everyone else working for them. So I wouldn’t change anything.” When asked if he had any regrets from his time in the role, he replied: “No, it’s not what I would’ve sought, but you know, at the end of the day, you get to do an amazing job. You’ve got to take everything that comes with it.”
Also in the interview, Mr Knauf revealed that William was at his ‘lowest” after Kate was diagnosed with cancer. Both the King and the Princess of Wales were treated for cancer last year. Kate is now in remission and Charles is having ongoing treatment. He said: “Within a couple of weeks if you’re Prince William, you find out that both your wife and your father have cancer. I couldn’t believe it.”
Describing a phone call with William about Kate’s diagnosis, which was made public in March last year, Mr Knauf said: “It was awful, absolutely awful. It’s the lowest I’ve ever seen him. But the problem was that all this crazy conspiracy theory stuff kicked off in the background, online. ‘Was she really ill?’.
“But they didn’t want to say yet that she had cancer because they hadn’t told the children and they were still working through how to tell the children.” Mr Knauf said what he used to talk about the ‘most’ in the past with William was “how he and the princess were going to prepare their children for life in the public eye”.
He added: “His childhood in front of the media was quite difficult at times, and he knew that he was going to be raising his kids to deal with social media and mobile phones and all of that stuff.”
