Billionaire’s daughter got BBC job with help from social mobility charity
Child of Everton FC owner says her career ‘would never have happened’ without mentoring scheme
ON THE face of it, the daughter of one of Britain’s richest men seems an unlikely candidate for charitable help.
But Azadeh Moshiri has credited her time at a charity aimed at helping disadvantaged journalists for securing her new job at the BBC.
Ms Moshiri, whose father owns Everton football club, took part in the mentoring scheme of the John Schofield Trust which aims to improve the social mobility of journalists.
She has recently been promoted to “on air reporter and senior journalist” for BBC World News. She said her career “would never have happened” without the charity’s mentoring scheme, despite her mother being a familiar name on the BBC, Sky and CNN.
Ms Moshiri’s father is Farhad Moshiri, who bought Everton in 2016 and is worth, according to Forbes, £2.4 billion. His tenure has been controversial with the club on its seventh permanent manager in six years and hovering above the relegation zone, having just avoided the drop last season.
Mr Moshiri, an accountant by training, made his fortune after going into business in the 1990s with Alisher Usmanov, a Russian oligarch who was placed under UK sanctions after the invasion of Ukraine.
Mr Moshiri announced in the aftermath that he was severing all business links to the oligarch.
Ms Moshiri joined the John Schofield Trust mentoring scheme in June 2018. The charity was set up by the family and friends of John Schofield, a journalist who was killed while working for the BBC in Croatia in 1995.
About a year later, Ms Moshiri joined the BBC as a junior producer through the standard recruitment process before landing the on-air job earlier this year. She had previously worked for CNN as a producer.
Quoted in a press release issued by the charity in April, Ms Moshiri said: “My time at both CNN and BBC has offered me incredible opportunities to learn and grow. This chance to report, at an organisation I’m so proud of, would never have happened without the mentors I’ve had along the way.”
Ms Moshiri, who is in her early 30s, went to school in Paris and then Duke University in North Carolina. She was mentored at the charity by Matthew Amroliwala, the BBC newsreader who presents a daily programme on BBC World News.
Ms Moshiri’s mother Nazenin Ansari is an eminent broadcast journalist and has provided analysis on Iran, where she was born, for the BBC, CNN and Sky News among others.
The charity said that at the time Ms Moshiri was accepted on its mentoring scheme, its remit was to support young journalists and that it changed its “focus” to become a “social mobility charity” a year later in 2019. According to the current John Schofield Trust mission statement, its stated aim is to tackle “social mobility in UK broadcast newsrooms” to benefit “young people who may never have considered journalism as a career”.
It adds: “Our work aims to help break down the barriers to entry and progression in the industry, and to unlock the potential of disadvantaged young people across the UK.
“We want to make a real difference by developing the potential of people who come from less privileged backgrounds.”
Social media posts on Twitter show the charity was already regularly promoting the need for greater social mobility among broadcasters before 2019. In April 2017, for example, the charity tweeted: “The Trust aims to improve greater social diversity for the next generation of journalists.” and then a few weeks later: “The Trust aims to improve diversity and social mobility for all news broadcasters and recognises this has to start from a young age. #BBCpay.”
Ms Moshiri said: “I applied to the John Schofield Trust according to the criteria and process at the time, whilst working at CNN.”
David Stenhouse, the charity’s chief executive, said: “Until 2019 the Trust’s remit was to support the development of talented young broadcast journalists.
“In 2019 the Trust changed its focus to become a social mobility charity which welcomes applications from candidates who come from backgrounds which are under-represented in UK journalism. In 2021 and 2022 the cohorts selected by the Trust lead the journalism industry in terms of socioeconomic diversity, disability and a range of other criteria.”
He added: “The Trust takes great care and effort to ensure that its selection process is rigorous and fair.”
He said: “In 2020 the early career mentoring scheme was significantly changed to align it with our revised mission as a social mobility charity.”
‘This chance to report would never have happened without the mentors I have had along the way’