Amy Guttman
Most organisations generate substantial content but get little media coverage. The problem is rarely a lack of stories – it is a failure to understand what makes a story publishable. Journalists and executives read the same events through different lenses, and that gap costs organisations visibility when they need it most.
Most organisations struggle to turn what they know into press coverage – Amy Guttman, a foreign correspondent for PBS Newshour, BBC, and Forbes, helps founders and leaders understand what makes their story publishable, and how to tell it.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Amy Guttman
- Two decades of active reporting for PBS Newshour, BBC, and Forbes means her editorial judgment is drawn from field experience, not synthesis – organisations get a practitioner’s framework for media engagement, not an interpreter’s summary of it
- Her PBS Newshour documentary on Syrian refugee entrepreneurs in Jordan was used by the Platform for Inclusive Finance to brief international investors – a direct example of field journalism producing commercially actionable intelligence
- Her storytelling workshops have been delivered to over a thousand founders at the Hello Tomorrow Global Summit and at European Commission-sponsored innovation events, giving teams a journalist’s discipline for identifying and pitching the story the press will actually run
- She moderates senior panels at the Asian Leadership Conference, Tech.EU Summit, sTARTUp Day, and Social Media Week London – making her one of the few speakers equally effective as keynote voice and event host
- She continues to file stories for VOA and the BBC, meaning her input on media and market dynamics draws on current reporting rather than historical observation
Biography highlights
- Foreign correspondent for PBS Newshour, BBC (From Our Own Correspondent), CBS News, AP, Al Jazeera, NPR, PRI, and VOA
- Forbes contributor covering entrepreneurs and ecosystems globally, with additional credits in The Atlantic, Fast Company, and Australian Financial Review
- Produced a PBS Newshour Weekend documentary on Syrian refugee entrepreneurs in Jordan
- Hosted Perspectives in Motion, a podcast on urban design and mobility, sponsored by Schindler
- Guest lecturer, Columbia Business School’s Chazen Institute for Global Immersion (2019)
- Moderated panels at the Asian Leadership Conference (Seoul), Hello Tomorrow Global Summit (Paris), sTARTUp Day (Tartu), Tech.EU Summit (Brussels), and Social Media Week London
- Workshop facilitator for European Commission-sponsored innovation events (EASME) and Hello Tomorrow Global Summit
Biography
The stories that get press coverage are rarely the ones an organisation planned to tell. They are the ones shaped around what a journalist needs – and most organisations never develop the discipline to make that shift. Amy Guttman spent twenty years on the other side of that problem, reporting from Tehran, Havana, Amman, and Nairobi for PBS Newshour, BBC, and Forbes.
Her field assignments produced original insight from markets where the dominant narrative was frequently wrong. She reported on female tech entrepreneurs among Iran’s engineering student population, documented Cuba’s pharmaceutical sector for PBS Newshour Weekend, and produced a documentary on Syrian refugee entrepreneurs operating commercially in Jordan. That film was used by the Platform for Inclusive Finance to brief a room of international investors on field-level commercial opportunity – a direct translation of journalism into business intelligence.
That same editorial judgment drives her work with organisations and founders. Her workshops have reached over a thousand founders at the Hello Tomorrow Global Summit and at European Commission-sponsored innovation events. They are built around one practical question: what makes a story publishable, and how do you build a media strategy around that answer. She moderates senior panels at the Asian Leadership Conference in Seoul, sTARTUp Day in Estonia, and the Tech.EU Summit in Brussels, and has hosted the Women Innovators’ Awards for the European Commission at VivaTech in Paris.
She began her career at CBS News in New York, moved through San Francisco during the 1990s tech boom, and has been based in London since 2000. She continues to file stories for VOA and the BBC, which means the insight she brings to organisations draws on active reporting, not past observation.
Key speaking topics
- Media strategy and storytelling for organisations and founders
- Entrepreneurial ecosystems and emerging markets
- Global trends and geopolitical shifts as commercial signals
- Women and entrepreneurship
- Smart cities and urban innovation
- Inclusive finance and frontier market opportunity
Ideal for
- Startup and innovation teams seeking to build media presence and press strategy
- Conference and summit organisers requiring a moderator with deep preparation and editorial instincts
- Investment forums or accelerator programmes covering emerging or frontier markets
- Corporate innovation functions engaging with startup ecosystems across complex markets
Audience outcomes
- A working framework for identifying what makes an organisational story publishable, and how to pitch it to the press
- A field-sourced understanding of commercial dynamics in emerging and high-complexity markets, beyond what desk research provides
- Practical tools for thinking about media relations from a journalist’s perspective rather than a communications function’s
- Clarity on how societal, cultural, and geopolitical shifts generate specific, identifiable commercial opportunities
- Greater confidence among founders and innovation teams in shaping and communicating their story externally
Talks
Delivered at the AllWeb Summit (Skopje), LEAP Summit (Zagreb), Hello Tomorrow Global Summit (Paris), and Spark.me Startup Summit (Montenegro), this talk gives organisations and founders a journalist’s framework for identifying the story that gets published – and building a strategy around it.
Key takeaways:
- Why the story an organisation wants to tell is rarely the one the press will run – and how to close that gap
- The specific elements that make a pitch publishable, illustrated through real-world cases from the speaker’s own reporting
- A repeatable approach to identifying your organisation’s most compelling narrative and connecting it to what journalists are actively seeking
Drawing on field reporting from established and emerging ecosystems across Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and the Americas, this talk examines why some entrepreneurial ecosystems scale and others stall – and what the difference means for the organisations and governments investing in them.
Key takeaways:
- The role of government, investors, and anchor institutions in enabling or blocking ecosystem growth
- What field-sourced signals – beyond the official narrative – tell you about a market’s actual potential
- Lessons from high-complexity markets including Jordan, Cuba, and Lithuania that challenge conventional assumptions about where commercial opportunity is found