Kate Garraway
A growing share of the workforce is quietly holding two jobs at once: their paid role and the unpaid care of a partner, parent or child with a serious condition. Most organisations have no language for this, no policy that fits it, and no senior voice naming it from experience. The result is hidden absenteeism, talent loss and a cohort of high performers who burn out without ever asking for help.
Kate Garraway MBE is one of Britain’s most recognised broadcast journalists and a public voice on caring, resilience and long-term illness in the workplace.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Kate Garraway
- She brings the rare combination of a national household name and a serious, specific subject: the lived reality of being a working carer, drawn from her own years caring for her late husband Derek Draper.
- Her interviewing craft is honed on live national television. She handles unscripted rooms, sensitive subject matter and senior executives on stage with the same control she shows on Good Morning Britain.
- Three consecutive National Television Awards for her authored documentaries give her authority on duty-of-care and social-care themes that few corporate speakers can match.
- She moves credibly between hosting an awards night, anchoring a conference, conducting an on-stage CEO interview and delivering a personal keynote on resilience, without changing register awkwardly between formats.
- Her MBE for broadcasting, journalism and charity makes her a natural fit for client events that need a name guests recognise from their breakfast television.
Biography highlights
- Main presenter on ITV’s Good Morning Britain since launch in 2014.
- Host of the weekday mid-morning show on Smooth Radio since 2014.
- Host of ITV’s Life Stories, succeeding Piers Morgan, from 2021.
- MBE in the 2022 New Year Honours for services to broadcasting, journalism and charity.
- Author of two Sunday Times bestsellers, The Power of Hope (2021) and The Strength of Love (2023).
- Winner of three National Television Awards for her ITV documentaries Finding Derek, Caring for Derek and Derek’s Story, plus a TRIC Special Award for her broadcasting career.
Biography
The hardest conversations in modern workplaces are not about strategy. They are about the colleague managing a parent’s dementia, the senior leader whose partner has a long-term illness, the high performer whose home life has quietly become a second full-time role. Kate Garraway has spent the last five years living and reporting that reality in public.
Most viewers know her from ITV’s Good Morning Britain, where she has been a main presenter since the programme launched in 2014, and from her weekday show on Smooth Radio. The wider broadcasting CV runs through GMTV, Daybreak and ITV’s Life Stories, the long-running interview series she took over from Piers Morgan in 2021. The TRIC Special Award and her 2022 MBE for services to broadcasting, journalism and charity sit alongside that work.
The body of work that gives her something distinctive to say to corporate audiences is more recent. After her husband Derek Draper became one of the UK’s most seriously affected long Covid patients, she made three authored documentaries for ITV, Finding Derek, Caring for Derek and Kate Garraway: Derek’s Story, each of which won the National Television Award for Best Authored Documentary. Her two memoirs, The Power of Hope and The Strength of Love, were Sunday Times bestsellers and turned her into one of the country’s most quoted voices on caring, resilience and the social-care system.
What she offers in a corporate room is a presenter who can hold a live audience for a full event and, when the brief calls for it, speak with first-hand authority on what it actually costs employees to look after someone they love while staying in their job.
Key speaking topics
- Working carers and the hidden workforce
- Resilience and personal leadership through crisis
- Long-term illness and return-to-work
- Mental health and wellbeing at work
- Live event hosting and on-stage interviewing
- Awards hosting and conference moderation
- Broadcast journalism and media interviewing
Ideal for
- Conferences and awards evenings looking for a household-name host with strong interview craft.
- HR, reward and benefits leaders building credible support for working carers and employees with long-term illness.
- Wellbeing, DEI and ERG events that need a public figure who can speak from experience rather than theory.
- Boards and leadership offsites running an on-stage CEO or guest interview where a trained journalist adds value.
Audience outcomes
- A clearer view of what caring responsibilities look like inside their own workforce, and how often they go unspoken.
- Practical language for managers having difficult conversations with employees facing serious illness at home.
- A grounded perspective on resilience that does not flatten into motivational cliche.
- For hosted formats, a tightly run event with senior guests interviewed at the level they expect from national television.