Emily Maitlis Keynote Speaker

Emily Maitlis is an award winning, acclaimed journalist and regular keynote speaker and moderator at business conferences. Emily was recognised by GQ Magazine as one of the most influential people in Britain.

Emily spent much of her career working for the BBC; she was ‘Newsnight’s main Anchor on BBC2. Today she hosts the Gold Award winning daily political podcast The News Agents and The News Agents USA. These shows instantly became the go to listen for intelligent analysis, deep diving into the days News with expert opinions.

Having covered elections in the US and UK for the BBC, she more recently fronted the 2024 Channel 4 General Election special steering viewers through what many are predicting to be a game-changing moment in British politics, and their coverage of the US Elections.

During her career, Emily has made acclaimed documentaries about Facebook, Donald Trump, Nicolas Sarkozy and Madonna and has worked alongside David Dimbleby on General and US elections. Emily secured an exclusive television interview with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in 2011, and has interviewed major political figures including Bill Clinton, Henry Kissinger and Christine Lagarde, as well as the last six UK prime ministers. She has interviewed key figures from the world of sport, entertainment and business such as David Beckham, Hugh Grant and George Soros.

In 2019, Emily hit the headlines with a milestone interview with Prince Andrew who talked publicly for the first time about his links to Jeffrey Epstein. This globally viewed interview won Emily another RTS Television Journalism Award for Interview of the Year. Emily Co-Executive produced the documentary, Andrew – The Problem Prince, which examined his decision to be interviewed and the aftermath, aired in 2 parts on Ch4 in 2023.

She has also been awarded the London Press Club ‘Broadcast Journalist of the Year’ Award for her work on Newsnight and the Wincott business award for “Inside Facebook”.

She covered 18 months of the US presidential primaries and campaign, and has interviewed Donald Trump. Emily is celebrated for her unique and inimitable interview style with GQ Magazine saying “Don’t confuse her with Andrew Neil. He grills; she incinerates”.

Emily is also author of the Sunday Times bestseller, Airhead: An Exploration of the Imperfect Art of Making News, which is currently being adapted by Amazon – A Very Royal Scandal on air in the Autumn of 24. She has written for The Sunday Times and the Spectator as well as the Guardian, the Evening Standard, inews and the New Statesman.

In 2019 Emily Executive Produced the Amazon Prime series ‘A Very Royal Scandal’, starring Ruth Wilson as Emily and Michael Sheen as Prince Andrew. The series is a retelling of Emily’s professional and personal journey as a Newsnight journalist, leading to her acclaimed interview.

Emily delivered the flagship address of the 2022 Edinburgh TV Festival – The James MacTaggart Memorial Lecture – as the Festival returned to an in-person event at the end of August. The lecture covered the complex world of modern journalism exploring the threat to reporting the news and holding power to account across the globe, how it comes not just with intimidation and outright censorship, but in more nuanced ways with language and normalizing the extraordinary.

Emily speaks Spanish, Italian, French and English and is keen runner.