Mishal Husain

Mishal Husain presents news bulletins on BBC1 and is well known internationally for her work on BBC World News, where she flagship programme, Impact with Mishal Husain. She has also appeared on BBC2’s Newsnight.

Mishal has reported from around the world for the BBC and presented live programmes on location, including during the Beijing Olympics, the Shanghai Expo, the Royal Wedding, the death of Osama bin Laden and the assassination of Benazir Bhutto.

She will also be one of the key BBC faces for coverage of the London Olympics in 2012, and recently co-hosted a special live programme to mark one year to go till the Games.

In 2009 she presented a three-part series for BBC2 on the life of Mahatma Gandhi. This year, her documentary series ‘How Facebook Changed the World’ documented the use of social media by ‘Arab Spring’ activists she met while travelling and filming in 5 countries. It was critically acclaimed, with the Observer calling it ‘a remarkable history lesson’.

Mishal’s diverse talents have also taken her to a range of other BBC programmes, including ‘From our Own Correspondent’ on BBC radio, and ‘A History of the World in 100 Objects’ for BBC television.

Mishal is particularly well known in the fiercely competitive television market in the United States, helping establish the BBC brand there as its first Washington-based anchor. Her nightly news programmes in 2002 and 2003 developed a keen following around the time of the Iraq war.

Mishal was born in the UK in 1973 but grew up in the Middle East. She was educated at Cambridge University, where she read law, and went on to complete a Masters in Law at the European University Institute in Florence.

In 2009 she chaired the judging panel for the prestigious Orange Prize for New Writers, and was also named by The Times as one of the five most influential Muslim women in the UK. She is also an ambassador for the charities Operation Smile and the British Asian Trust.

She lives in London with her husband and three young sons.