Clare McDonnell

Why organisations work with Clare McDonnell

• She is the voice that announces the news to the UK on BBC Radio 5 Live Drive each evening, and she brings that same authority and composure to a corporate stage.
• She presents Woman’s Hour on BBC Radio 4 and anchored Newsday on the BBC World Service, which means she can interview a chief executive, a campaigner, and a minister inside the same hour without losing the audience.
• She has covered live, unscripted moments of national consequence including the death of Queen Elizabeth II and the resignations of Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, which is the kind of pressure that makes a conference room feel manageable.
• She moves from a five-thousand-seat venue at ExCeL London to a small charity dinner without changing register, which is what awards hosts and panel chairs are actually paid for.
• She is a working journalist, not a former one, which means panellists are interviewed by someone who is still asking questions of national figures every weekday.

Biography highlights

• Daily presenter, BBC Radio 5 Live Drive.
• Regular presenter, BBC Radio 4 Woman’s Hour.
• Original launch presenter, BBC 6 Music, March 2002 to March 2010.
• Anchor, Newsday, BBC World Service; presenter on the Global News podcast.
• Reporter, BBC One’s The One Show; former reporter on BBC Three’s Liquid News.
• Sports presenting credits include the Wimbledon Championships and the UEFA Women’s European Football Championships.

Biography

The presenter of BBC Radio 5 Live Drive is, for several million UK listeners each weekday evening, the voice that explains the news as it happens. Clare McDonnell has held that chair through Westminster confidence votes, two Conservative leadership exits, and the moment she announced the death of Queen Elizabeth II live on national radio.

She is also a regular presenter of BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour, anchored Newsday on the BBC World Service, and presents on the Global News podcast, the BBC’s most-downloaded news podcast. She was one of the original launch presenters of BBC 6 Music in 2002 and reported on BBC Three’s Liquid News before moving into mainstream news and sports anchoring, including the Wimbledon Championships and the UEFA Women’s European Football Championships.

For organisations, the relevant point is the craft. Hosting a conference is not the same job as presenting a radio show, but it draws on the same muscles: keeping a panel honest, hearing what was actually said, moving an audience through a long programme without losing them, and asking the question the room is thinking but cannot phrase. McDonnell does that work daily on live national radio. She has covered enough unpredictable moments to be unbothered by the small ones that derail a conference: a missing panellist, a slide deck that fails, a CEO who answers a different question. The pressure of a corporate stage is, for her, the easier version of a Tuesday at five.

She is represented by Knight Ayton Management and chairs panels, hosts awards, and moderates audience Q and As from the ExCeL Arena in London to small charity events.

Key speaking topics

• Awards hosting
• Panel moderation
• Live event hosting
• Audience Q and A chairing
• Conference and gala hosting
• UK and global news interviews

Ideal for

• Awards ceremonies looking for a host with national broadcast presence.
• Leadership conferences needing a panel chair who can interview chief executives and policy figures.
• Corporate galas and customer events where the host carries the evening across multiple segments.
• Charity dinners and advocacy events that need a host with newsroom credibility.

Audience outcomes

• A programme that runs to time without feeling rushed.
• Panels that stay on the question the audience cares about, not the answer the speaker prepared.
• Senior figures interviewed in a way that gets a real answer, not a press line.
• An audience that feels addressed by someone they recognise from national radio.
• A host who absorbs the unexpected without the audience noticing.