Shaunagh Connaire is an
Emmy-nominated Irish broadcast journalist, who has worked for the BBC, Channel 4 and CNBC amongst others.
Early life
Connaire was raised in
Longford and attended
Meán Scoil Mhuire, an all-girls school in the town.[1] In May 2018, she cancelled an invitation she had received to speak to the schools graduating class because the school declined to show a five-minute
showreel she had put together for the occasion.[1]
She graduated from
UCD in 2006 and received an
MA in journalism from
Goldsmiths College in London in 2008.
Professional life
She began her professional life working as a real accountant with
KPMG in Dublin.[2][3] After graduation from Goldsmiths, Connaire went to work for the BBC as a researcher and producer, working on
BBC HARDtalk and
BBC World News.
This was followed by production and reporting roles at
CNBC and
PBS Frontline, before she moved to
Channel 4, where we worked on over 30
Unreported World episodes as the associate producer.[3] In her first film on screen for Unreported World, she reported from
Sierra Leone on the
Ebola epidemic.[3]
Awards
In 2009, Connaire was shortlisted as 'Student Broadcast Journalist of the Year' by the Guardian and Sky News, just one year after leaving her career as an accountant with KPMG.[3]