Biography of Sharon Machira

Sharon Machira is a multimedia journalist and storyteller with over eight years of experience in telling African stories. Based in Nairobi, Kenya, she works for the BBC as a TV and Radio Presenter where she is also a Senior Presenter.

Education and Career

Machira obtained a Bachelor degree in International relations from the University of Leeds. While in school, she was a member of the Leeds Student Television East-African Society. After getting her Bachelor degree, she obtained a Master of Arts from the City, University of London.

Sharon Machira began her career at the BBC as a Digital Content Associate. She worked at the BBC for 6 months before moving on to Bloomberg LP to become a content associate where she pitched stories from Eastern Africa. She became a documentary filmmaker for VICE Media in 2014 and eventually became a Television News Producer at Mediamax Network Ltd. Presently, she works at BBC as a content lead, producer, and TV presenter. She is also the Co-founder, lead creative and content marketer of Backdrop Production & Creative Agency.

Notable Works

Ms Machira is a celebrated journalist who has dabbled in documentaries, live news coverage, event hosting and advertising. She is passionate about content creation and the power of telling authentic African stories. One of her most notable works, which she did for the BBC, is a YouTube documentary called  “Kenya’s Spy Queen”.  This 27 minutes documentary captured the interesting life of Private Detective Jane Mugo and went viral on social media after its release.  She came under social media backlash for the Jane Mugo documentary from Kenyans who thought it was mediocre content and bad journalism. However, Machira made it clear in an Instagram post following the backlash that she couldn’t care less with the caption “I said what  I said!”

In addition to her work as a journalist, she is also co-founder of one of East Africa’s most popular podcasts, It’s Related, I Promise which she co-hosts alongside  Muthoni Muchiri and Julia Gaitho

Listen to the podcaster on Document Women’s “We’re Not Crazy, You Are”

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