Alice Fordham, a radio journalist, was born and raised in the UK. She grew up in a family with two younger siblings and had slightly strict parents. As a young adult, she wanted to be a lawyer and interned at a law firm where she realised she wanted to be a journalist. “I thought that maybe I could do this for a living”.

Alice says she is learning everyday and that journalism opened up many possibilities. She admired NPR and had been a foreign correspondent in Middle East when she got the offer to work with them. She took it up and has been working as radio journalist since then.

Alice has worked in difficult regions including Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, Palestine, Yemen, Sudan, Libya, Tunisia, Mali, Egypt, Algeria, Morocco and Turkey. She says she was scared while reporting in some of the challenging situations but the work she did was worth it. “In a way it is good to be scared. Getting a pinch of what people have gone through makes you a more sympathetic journalist. It makes you calm, sensitive and insightful. I am a different person as a result of it.”

– Smita Sharma