AS A longstanding presenter of the Radio 4 Today programme, Mishal Husain has one of the most iconic jobs in British broadcasting.
Sharp, well-informed, and, if necessary, combative – as a clutch of high-ranking politician interviewees can attest – her status as a journalistic heavyweight has been well established for years. So it is somewhat ironic that it took the BBC gender pay gap scandal of 2017 to truly make her a household name.
Husain was born in Northampton to Pakistani parents but brought up from the age of two in the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia where her father worked as a doctor.
At the age of 12 she was sent to Cobham Hall school in Kent – a “tough” experience but one that taught her to be self-reliant. “It was hard to be thousands of miles away, but now I feel incredibly fortunate. It was character building. It taught me to be independent.”
She went on to read law at New Hall College, Cambridge, and then the European University Institute where she gained a masters. She got her first experience in journalism as an intern for an English language newspaper in Islamabad.
Her first full time job as a journalist was in 1996 at Bloomberg TV. She subsequently joined the BBC as a producer, building her career at the international BBC World News, where she presented her own programme, Impact With Mishal Husain.
She is also known for live presenting on location, including broadcasting from Pakistan after the death of Osama bin Laden and covering the elections in India in 2014, an experience she has described as the closest she ever came to dying: “We went to a political rally in Aligarh and as the sound of Narendra Modi’s helicopter was heard overhead, the crowd suddenly surged forward. It was absolutely terrifying, that sensation of struggling to breathe, all these people behind me. It was Chris, my cameraman, who rescued me. He managed to pick me up and haul me over a fence.”
She has presented critically acclaimed BBC documentaries including: Malala - Shot for Going to School, How Facebook Changed the World and Britain & Europe: The Immigration Question.
In 2016, Husain was named by the Sunday Times as one of the 500 most influential people in Britain. She has previously won Broadcaster of the Year at the London Press Club Awards, Presenter of the Year at the Women in Film and TV Awards and was named one of the Financial Times’ Women of the Year.
Her debut book The Skills: From First Job to Top Job – What Every Woman Needs to Know was published in September 2018 by HarperCollins UK.
