Speakers

Andrea Catherwood is a world renowned television and radio broadcaster. As a main news anchor for Bloomberg Television, Andrea presented weekday business programme ‘Last Word with Andrea Catherwood’, which focused on breaking news and the effect on the business market.

Andrea regularly presents Last Word and You & Yours on BBC Radio 4, as well as having been heard numerous times on Women's Hour and on Saturday Live with Rev. Richard Coles.

Prior to this, Andrea was one of ITV’s main newscasters, presenting ITV’s Evening News, Lunchtime News, News At Ten and weekend bulletins. She anchored open ended coverage for most of the day on ITV1 as events unfolded on the 7^th July 2005, the London bombings. She has also anchored in the field from Washington, Baghdad and Kabul.

She was the first female presenter of ITV1’s flagship Sunday morning political programme when she presented ‘Sunday Edition’ from 2006 - 2008 interviewing world leaders and interrogating Britain’s top politicians.

She made her name as ITN’s award winning International Correspondent. During her 8 years on the road for ITN she covered almost every major world news story from Kosovo where she interviewed Tony Blair, to the Omagh bombing (for which she was nominated for a BAFTA) to Sierra Leone, Mozambique, Israel and Palestine.

She was one of the first journalists to reach New York after September 11^th and was the only British journalist in Mazar-i-Shariff in Afghanistan where she witnessed the fall of the Taliban to the Northern Alliance and was subsequently injured by shrapnel in a Taliban suicide attack.

A member of the first overseas press team admitted to Guantanamo Bay, Andrea was harshly critical of the conditions she witnessed.

She was embedded with the British army in southern Iraq in March 2003. In Baghdad she reported and anchored from the Palestine Hotel in the city before the establishment of the ‘green zone’. She championed the plight of children mutilated in the allied bombing and was instrumental in pressurising the U.S military to evacuate a number of amputees to Kuwait for life saving medical treatment. She later made an ITV 1 documentary about their story.

Andrea spent 5 years in Hong Kong where she worked as a correspondent and anchor for CNBC Asia. She reported from all over South East Asia including Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand and Burma where she is among the very few broadcast journalists who interviewed Aung San Suu Kyi. She made documentaries in Burma and Laos. She also anchored for CNBC Asia during the 1997 Handover of Hong Kong and the subsequent stock market turbulence across the region.

At UTV in Belfast from 1991 to 1993 she was a reporter for news and consumer affairs and travelled around Europe presenting two series of travel show co-production with RTE called ‘Bon Voyage’.

She began her career with BBC Northern Ireland at just 16 winning ‘Young Broadcaster of the Year’ in 1984. She had already interviewed Gerry Adams and Garret Fitzgerald before she went to University of Manchester where she gained and honours degree in Law.

Andrea lives in London with her husband and three young sons. She is involved in a number of charities including the Hope Foundation, as its UK Ambassador.