Isha Isatu Sesay is a British journalist of Sierra Leonean descent. From 2005 to 2018, she worked as an anchor and correspondent for CNN International.
6 January 1976
London, UK
British
Sierra Leonean descent
On the occasion of the 2018 World Refugee Day, Sesay spoke with Samantha Nutt, founder of War Child the USA, an organisation to help and protect children from warzones.
In April 2019 she hosted a public discussion with Michelle Obama Becoming: an intimate conversation with Michelle Obama in front of 20,000 guests at the Accor Hotel Arena in Paris and in Amsterdam.
Her book Beneath the Tamarind Tree, about the abduction of Chibok girls in 2014, was published in July 2019 by Harper Collins and as an audiobook on different platforms.
She was a speaker at the 2019 Brilliant Minds event in Stockholm, Sweden. The event was initiated in 2015 by Spotify founder and CEO Daniel Ek and serial entrepreneur Arash Pournouri. The event claims to support open thinking in the music and technology industry.
In September 2019 Sesay was invited as a guest speaker in the BBC program Africa today for two days, where she talked on women’s representation in the media.
In September 2019 she was one of the hosts of the Global Citizen Festival, together with Bozoma Saint John. This event connects live music with speeches and discussions on actual global problems of society, environment, and politics and is closely related to the Global Poverty Project.
She was a speaker at the Whitaker Peace & Development Initiative (WPDI) Place for Peace event in September 2019.
Born in London, England in 1976 to Temne parents from Sierra Leone, Sesay returned with them at the age of seven to their homeland. Raised in their Muslim faith, she lived in Sierra Leone for most of her childhood. She is one of three children, with an older sister and a younger brother. Isha’s mother is Dr. Kadi Sesay, a former lecturer at Fourah Bay College in Freetown, Sierra Leone. In 1992 Dr. Sesay, was appointed as an advisor to the government of Valentine Strasser. Isha’s father worked as a legal advisor to the SLPMB (Sierra Leone Produce Marketing Board. He died in 1988.
Sesay studied at the private Fourah Bay College School and St Joseph’s Secondary School in Freetown. In 1992 aged 16, she moved to the UK for further study and college. After completing her A-levels, she was accepted into Trinity College, Cambridge, where she read English. She worked as a waitress in a bar while studying. Sesay decided to become a television journalist, having previously aspired to become an actress. During her final year, she began writing to media groups seeking work.
After graduating, Sesay began her television career as a researcher for the BBC talk show Kilroy, initially as an unpaid intern before becoming an employee. In 1998 she moved to Glasgow to work for BBC Scotland, and after a period behind the camera got her first job as a TV announcer on BBC Choice. She went on to present a variety of programmes for the BBC, CNN and TWI, before joining Sky in March 2002.
At Sky, Sesay spent over three years as an anchor on Good Morning Sports Fans for Sky Sports News. She considers the high points of this period to be meeting former boxer Michael Watson, interviewing Ellen MacArthur, and travelling with members of the Arsenal football team following an exhibition match at Reebok Stadium in support of Nwankwo Kanu‘s Heart Foundation. She later moved to ITN, where she anchored the ITV Morning News programme, and was also a newsreader on breakfast programme GMTV.
In November 2005 Sesay became a news anchor and correspondent at CNN International, based at the network’s global headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia, in the United States. She travelled to Nigeria in April 2007 to cover Nigeria’s presidential election, where she conducted interviews with both outgoing president Olusegun Obasanjo, and the newly elected president Umaru Yar’Adua. Later that year, she was in South Africa to cover the launch of the Global Elders (?)
In 2011 she swapped roles with Michael Holmes, and was assigned as the presenter of BackStory.
On 2 August 2018 Sesay announced that she was leaving CNN after 13 years. She cited the media’s focus on United States President Donald Trump as a reason for her decision. Sesay announced that she would write a book about the abduction of Chibok girls (Under the Tamarind Tree, 2019). She has continued her engagement with African issues.
Mother – Kadi Sesay
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isha_Sesay accessed 22/03/2022
https://edition.cnn.com/CNN/anchors_reporters/sesay.isha.html accessed 22/03/2022
https://variety.com/2021/digital/news/cnn-isha-sesay-ceo-okaymedia-1234940956/ accessed 22/03/2022
https://m.facebook.com/newafricanwoman/photos/quoteunquoteand-what-will-she-do-next-find-out-morehttpsnawmagazinecomisha-sesay/10156400164707092/ accessed 22/03/2022
