Speakers

Lara Joannides

Senior Journalist, Creative Diversity Lead, BBC

Lara Joannides leads on the BBC's multi-award-winning 50:50 The Equality Project, working with teams across the organisation to monitor their on-air diversity in real time. Outlets include BBC News and World Service TV, Radio and Digital channels, BBC Sport, BBC Children’s and live events such as Glastonbury and the BBC Proms. Lara worked as a journalist at the BBC and Sky News for 10 years before joining 50:50 in 2019, and has since has since rolled out its expansion to include disability and ethnicity monitoring, and piloting the monitoring of socio-economic diversity in BBC content.

Lara has always felt passionately about reaching underserved audiences. Before joining the 50:50 Project, she was the senior journalist and output editor for BBC Africa's first ever youth programme and recently worked with BBC News Culture & Development leading on succession planning, career development and culture change initiatives to increase diverse representation in the newsroom.