Emily Maitlis
Leadership audiences now operate inside a political and media environment that moves faster than their comms functions can track. The tension is not information scarcity, it is signal: what a story actually means for a business, which sources to trust, and when a developing situation shifts from noise into a board-level decision. Organisations need a reader of events who can cut through the churn in real time.
Emily Maitlis is a broadcast journalist and interviewer, former lead anchor of BBC Newsnight and co-host of Global’s The News Agents, who helps leadership audiences read the politics, media dynamics and geopolitical shifts shaping their decisions.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Emily Maitlis
- She holds power to account live, on the record. The 2019 Newsnight interview with Prince Andrew, winner of RTS Interview of the Year and Scoop of the Year, is the reference point clients book against when they want a real interviewer in the room rather than a host.
- She reads Westminster and Washington in the same conversation. Fifteen-plus years on Newsnight and the daily discipline of The News Agents give her a working map of the political operators, donors and advisors shaping policy on both sides of the Atlantic.
- She is an operator on stage, not a presence. Moderating panels, running fireside interviews with CEOs and ministers, chairing leadership offsites: the craft is the product, and it is the craft that sold out the 2022 MacTaggart Lecture and her speaking diary.
- She brings a named argument about media and democracy. Her MacTaggart Lecture, “Boiling Frog: Why We Have To Stop Normalising The Absurd,” sets out a specific thesis on populism and impartiality that leadership audiences can engage with rather than nod along to.
Biography highlights
- Lead anchor of BBC Newsnight, 2018 to 2021; a Newsnight presenter from 2006.
- Co-host of The News Agents, the daily Global podcast launched in August 2022 with Jon Sopel and Lewis Goodall; Gold winner for Best News and Current Affairs Podcast at the British Podcast Awards.
- Delivered the James MacTaggart Memorial Lecture at the Edinburgh TV Festival, 2022.
- Author of Airhead: The Imperfect Art of Making News (Penguin, 2019).
- RTS Network Presenter of the Year, 2019 and 2020; RTS Interview of the Year and Scoop of the Year, 2020, for the Prince Andrew interview; London Press Club Broadcast Journalist of the Year, 2017.
- Queens’ College, Cambridge; earlier career with NBC Asia in Hong Kong and Sky News as a business correspondent.
Biography
The Prince Andrew interview was broadcast on Newsnight in November 2019. Emily Maitlis asked the questions that became the public record of that story, and it remains the case study most often cited when organisations talk about what a real interview looks like. The RTS named it Interview of the Year and Scoop of the Year.
That night sits inside a longer body of work. Maitlis spent roughly fifteen years on Newsnight, becoming lead anchor in 2018, after building the craft at NBC Asia, Sky News as a business correspondent, and earlier BBC roles. The output is a consistent habit of pressing political and financial power for specifics rather than positioning.
Since leaving the BBC in 2022 she has co-hosted The News Agents with Jon Sopel and Lewis Goodall, a Global podcast that took a Gold British Podcast Award for Best News and Current Affairs. Her 2022 MacTaggart Lecture, “Boiling Frog: Why We Have To Stop Normalising The Absurd,” laid out a specific argument about how mainstream media coverage normalises populist politics, and how that reshapes the job of a public broadcaster.
For leadership audiences, the value is practical. She reads political risk and media dynamics for a living, she moderates and interviews on stage the way she does on screen, and she has a thesis about the information environment that serious rooms engage with. Her 2019 book Airhead: The Imperfect Art of Making News is the written version of that working method.
Key speaking topics
- UK politics and Westminster analysis
- US elections and transatlantic political risk
- Geopolitical flashpoints and their business implications
- Media, populism and the information environment
- Interviewing power: the craft of holding leaders to account
- Conference moderation, fireside interviews and awards hosting
Ideal for
- Leadership offsites, CEO summits and partner conferences needing a host or on-stage interviewer with real political and business range.
- Annual client conferences and investor events where a keynote on geopolitics, elections or the media environment sets the agenda.
- Boards and executive committees using an off-the-record session to pressure-test political and regulatory scenarios.
Audience outcomes
- A working read on the political and geopolitical stories most likely to affect the business over the next twelve months.
- A sharper view of how media narratives form, harden and reach decision-makers, and where that process is being gamed.
- Specific reference points from two decades of interviewing politicians, regulators and CEOs, used to illustrate rather than decorate the argument.
- A different quality of on-stage conversation when Maitlis is moderating: leaders pushed past talking points to the substance.