Marverine Cole
Live broadcast moments still decide whether a flagship event lands or fades. A senior audience can tell within minutes when a host is filling time and when a host is steering the room. The gap is widening between conferences that hold attention and those that lose it the moment the lights go down.
Marverine Cole is a multi-award-winning broadcaster and ITV Good Morning Britain newsreader who chairs flagship corporate and cultural events and contributes substantive commentary on mental health, media representation and consumer culture.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Marverine Cole
- She has anchored live news under pressure for Sky News, 5 News, ITV and the BBC, and brings that discipline to stage hosting where the running order changes in the moment.
- Her Mind Media Award for Journalist of the Year, won for the BBC Radio 4 documentary Black Girls Don’t Cry, gives her standing to chair sessions on mental health, race and representation without sounding rehearsed.
- An honorary doctorate from Birmingham City University and a four-year stint running its undergraduate journalism courses mean she can interview senior leaders and academics on equal footing.
- As Britain’s first Black female accredited beer sommelier and BBC Good Food columnist, she opens unusual commercial routes for brand and consumer events where culture, lifestyle and gender intersect.
Biography highlights
- Newsreader on ITV1’s Good Morning Britain; previous news anchor roles at Sky News (World News and Business Report), 5 News, BBC Midlands Today and ITV Central News
- Journalist of the Year, Mind Media Awards 2019, for the BBC Radio 4 documentary Black Girls Don’t Cry
- Honorary doctorate from Birmingham City University; former Director of Undergraduate Journalism courses, Birmingham School of Media (2018 to 2022)
- Britain’s first Black female accredited beer sommelier; resident beer columnist for BBC Good Food magazine
- Co-presenter of BBC Radio 4’s Saturday Live; presenter on Classic FM; contributor to BBC Radio 1Xtra and BBC 5 Live
- Contributing essayist to Sir Lenny Henry’s 2021 book Black British Lives Matter; board member of Birmingham Royal Ballet and The Student View
Biography
Live broadcast craft is a narrow skill, and it sits at the centre of what flagship corporate events still need. Cole has spent more than two decades inside that craft, presenting news for Sky News, 5 News, ITV Central, BBC Midlands Today and now ITV1’s Good Morning Britain. Sky News audiences watched her front a five-hour overnight World News and Business Report bulletin, including coverage of the 2008 Mumbai attacks.
The journalism is not a sideline. Her BBC Radio 4 documentary Black Girls Don’t Cry, on the disproportionate mental health pressures facing Black women, won Journalist of the Year at the Mind Media Awards in 2019. She has produced and presented further work for BBC Radio 4 and BBC 1Xtra on female gambling addiction and on women in UK rap, and contributed an essay to Sir Lenny Henry’s Black British Lives Matter in 2021.
Birmingham City University, where she trained as a broadcast journalist, brought her back as Director of Undergraduate Journalism courses from 2018 to 2022 and later awarded her an honorary doctorate. That academic spell shows in her interviewing: she frames questions for senior leaders without losing the audience in the room.
The off-news work fills out the brief. She is Britain’s first Black female accredited beer sommelier and BBC Good Food magazine’s resident beer columnist, presents on Classic FM, and co-presents Saturday Live on BBC Radio 4 with Reverend Richard Coles. For event organisers, that range translates into a host who can move from a board panel on workplace mental health to a brand showcase to a closing-night cultural conversation without changing register.
Key speaking topics
- Event hosting, moderation and on-stage interviewing
- Awards ceremony presentation
- Mental health and Black women’s experience
- Race, representation and inclusion in media
- Women in broadcast journalism
- Consumer culture, lifestyle and the beer industry
- Birmingham, the Midlands and regional creative industries
Ideal for
- Conference organisers commissioning a senior host for live, multi-track main-stage programmes
- DEI, wellbeing and ERG leaders running flagship internal events on race, mental health or women in the workplace
- Brand and consumer marketing teams hosting product launches, awards or media events
- Cultural and arts organisations seeking a credible chair for public conversations and panels
Audience outcomes
- A live programme that holds energy through agenda changes, technical hitches and difficult guests
- Sharper, more candid contributions from senior panellists prompted by a journalistically trained interviewer
- A session on mental health or representation that lands with substance, drawn from her own reported work rather than secondhand framing
- A consistent on-brand voice across a multi-day event run by a single experienced anchor