Stacey Dooley
Senior teams are asked to talk openly about mental health, domestic abuse, exploitation in supply chains and the welfare of younger workers, and most of them do it badly. The language is corporate, the staging is safe, and the people most affected rarely recognise themselves in it. What organisations need is a voice that can hold those subjects on a stage without flattening them.
Stacey Dooley is a BBC documentary-maker and broadcaster who hosts events and delivers keynotes on investigative storytelling, mental health and women’s experience for corporate and public-sector audiences.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Stacey Dooley
- A working method built over more than 100 BBC documentaries on trafficking, domestic abuse, extremism and fashion industry pollution, which gives her an unusual ability to discuss difficult subjects on a corporate stage without sanitising them.
- Recipient of the Grierson Trustees’ Award 2024, the youngest person ever to receive it, for outstanding contribution to documentary. A credential that audiences and journalists recognise immediately.
- A track record of taking serious subject matter to younger audiences, the demographic most internal communications teams struggle to reach with mental health, wellbeing and ethics content.
- Equally credible as an event host, on-stage interviewer and keynote speaker, which makes her a flexible booking for awards nights, conferences and internal leadership events on women, mental health or social impact.
Biography highlights
- BBC documentary presenter, with more than 100 films across BBC One, BBC Two and BBC Three.
- MBE for services to broadcasting, 2018 Birthday Honours.
- Grierson Trustees’ Award 2024, youngest recipient.
- One World Media Award (Popular Features) for Stacey Dooley: Face to Face with Isis, 2018.
- Sunday Times bestselling author: On the Front Line with the Women Who Fight Back (2018), Are You Really OK? (2022), Dear Minnie (2025).
- Winner, Strictly Come Dancing 2018 (BBC One); presenter of Glow Up and Stacey Dooley Sleeps Over.
Biography
Most corporate conversations about mental health, exploitation or domestic abuse fail the people they are about. The language is too cautious, the staging too clean, and the lived reality goes missing. Stacey Dooley has built a 17-year BBC career closing exactly that gap, on screen and in print, and audiences notice the difference.
She came up through Blood, Sweat and T-Shirts on BBC Three in 2008, with no journalism background, and went on to make more than 100 documentaries under the Stacey Dooley Investigates banner. The subjects span sex trafficking, domestic violence, extremism, fashion industry pollution, the illegal narcotics trade and Britain’s mental health emergency. Stacey Dooley: Face to Face with Isis won the Popular Features Award at the One World Media Awards in 2018.
The Grierson Trust gave her its Trustees’ Award in 2024 for outstanding contribution to documentary, citing her ability to bring difficult subjects to younger viewers and to ask direct, uncomfortable questions of people in authority. She is the youngest person ever to receive the award. She holds an MBE for services to broadcasting and is a Sunday Times bestselling author three times over, most recently with Dear Minnie: Conversations with Remarkable Mothers (Penguin, 2025).
For organisations, the value is twofold. As a host or on-stage interviewer, she can carry subject matter that defeats more traditional MCs. As a keynote speaker, she draws on documentary work that audiences already know, which lends weight to internal conversations on women’s safety, mental health and ethical practice that often struggle to land.
Key speaking topics
- Investigative documentary and storytelling
- Women’s experience, safety and rights
- Mental health and the limits of public conversation
- Ethical journalism on sensitive subjects
- Domestic abuse and coercive control
- Labour conditions and exploitation in global supply chains
- Career routes outside traditional media gatekeeping
Ideal for
- Corporate awards nights, gala dinners and conferences seeking a recognisable BBC host with editorial range.
- Internal leadership events on mental health, wellbeing or women’s safety where a corporate MC would feel mismatched.
- CHRO and Head of Internal Communications audiences planning campaigns on domestic abuse, mental health or supply chain ethics.
- Public sector, charity and NGO conferences on social impact, women’s rights or violence against women and girls.
Audience outcomes
- A documentary-maker’s view of how to talk about hard subjects without flattening them.
- Specific case material from BBC investigations into trafficking, domestic abuse, extremism and mental health.
- A more honest internal benchmark for what good journalism looks like on the issues organisations are increasingly asked to comment on.
- Permission to be more direct in internal communications about mental health and women’s experiences.