Apply now for Women in Journalism Scotland 2023 mentoring scheme
Women in Journalism Scotland has launched the third round of its successful mentoring scheme.
Our mentors have helped their mentees bag bylines in publications such as The New York Times and The Guardian, as well as building contacts and growing confidence.
On the 2023 programme we have more than 30 influential women journalists keen to share their knowledge and experience with the next generation.
Their names are among the most recognisable in Scottish and UK media, spanning print, broadcast, digital and radio. Their specialisms include politics, investigations, travel, food and drink, arts, health, sport, local news, digital, data, housing, opinion and tech.
Our 2023 mentors
Dani Garavelli is a freelance feature writer and columnist working for titles across the UK.
Laura Kuenssberg presents the BBC’s flagship interview show on Sunday mornings on BBC One. Before that she did a seven year stint as the BBC’s first female political editor, during which she reported for a wide range of BBC programmes, made a number of successful documentaries and won multiple awards. She loves meeting and supporting journalists earlier on in their careers.
Karin Goodwin is an investigative journalist and co-editor of The Ferret. Specialisms include migration, housing and homelessness, and other social issues. She's also worked on a wide range of investigations that look at power and ownership in modern Scotland and recently set-up the Ferret's first community newsroom with Greater Govanhill magazine, with whom she is working on a year-long project about health inequalities.
TV presenter and broadcast journalist Jean Johansson is the host of flagship Channel 4 show A Place In The Sun. As well as her role as regular reporter for The One Show and presenter on hugely popular BBC daytime programme Animal Park, she has shown her versatility by co-presenting Channel 5 consumer series Are They A Con?
Catherine Salmond is editor of The Herald. Previous roles include editor of Scotland on Sunday, live editor at The Scotsman and features editor at Edinburgh Evening News. She has a wealth of experience in online and print journalism and has mentored with WIJS over the last year.
Heather Dewar has worked in journalism for over 20 years. She has a huge amount of experience in broadcast journalism in both radio and television. When covid hit, Heather moved into the world of newspapers and began freelancing for the Scottish Daily Mail. She remains there today and in 2022, won Journalist of the Year and Sports News Writer of the Year at the Scottish Press Awards. She was highly commended for Interviewer of the Year, Sports Feature Writer of the Year and the Nicola Barry award.
Eilidh Barbour presents and reports for Premier League and FA Cup matches for BBC Final Score and also presents Sky Sports' Scottish Premiership live coverage. She previously reported and presented BT Sport's coverage of Scottish football, Champions League, Europa League and WSL matches. As a presenter, she regularly fronts Football Focus, Match of the Day 2, FA Cup matches and is the face of BBC golf.
Rhiannon J Davies is the founder and editor of the award-winning Greater Govanhill magazine, which takes a solutions-focused approach to covering local issues and aims to provide a platform to voices typically under-represented in the media. Prior to launching the magazine, she worked in freelance travel writing, digital video journalism, third sector communications.
Aasmah Mir is a presenter on Times Radio Breakfast. Before that she presented on Radio 4 and Radio 5 Live.
Ashley Davies is a freelance arts journalist with a particular interest in comedy interviews. She has weekly slots in The Times Scotland's Alba supplement and Metro, and was a judge at this year's Dave's Edinburgh Comedy Awards. In her 30 years in journalism, mainly in newspapers, she's done business reporting (which she hated), sub-editing, section/commission editing and feature writing, and is most happy doing the latter.
Pennie Taylor is a Glasgow-based freelance journalist and broadcaster. A health and social care specialist, she was BBC Scotland’s first health correspondent.
In Susan Egelstaff's previous life she was an international badminton player but after retiring from sport following the London 2012 Olympic Games, she became involved in journalism. She's been a writer and columnist for The Herald for ten years, covering primarily Olympic sports, and is also a regular contributor on BBC Radio Scotland.
Lesley-Anne Kelly is the head of data journalism at DC Thomson. She is an award winning journalist who led her team to nominations in the Scottish Press awards, the Future of Media Awards, and the global Sigma awards for data journalism – all in their first year.
Gabby Pieraccini is a specialist athletics writer and founder of the Decathletes of Europe website. Her coverage of combined events, in writing and in commentary, is in demand internationally and highly regarded for its combination of analysis and storytelling. Her work has been published by World Athletics, European Athletics and other athletics platforms.
Gabriella Bennett is an author and freelance journalist. She writes for The Observer, The Guardian, The Times and The Sunday Times on housing, travel and social justice. She was named travel writer of the year at the 2021 Scottish Press Awards and regional property journalist of the year at the 2021 UK Property Press Awards for her inviestigations into the cladding crisis.
Mary McCool is an award-winning journalist who has worked across major titles in Scotland since 2013. Her portfolio includes a range of hard news and features across digital, print and TV. She covered major events for STV News' online operation including the 2014 Commonwealth Games and the Scottish independence referendum, while her breaking news coverage of the 2018 Glasgow School of Art fire for the Scottish Sun won digital team of the year at the Scottish Press Awards. She now works for BBC News where she covers news, politics and human interest stories.
Vicky Allan is senior features writer for the Herald, specialising in the environment. She has been at the paper for the past 20 years and previously worked for Scotland on Sunday and the Times. She is also an author of non-fiction books on wild swimming, the menopause and trees, as well as one novel, Stray.
Anna Burnside has worked at the Gorgie-Dalry Gazette, the Sunday Times and everything in between. She has been a reporter, a sub editor, a section editor and an editor. Over a couple of stints as a freelance she had bylines in national papers, trade papers and women's magazines. She is currently a feature writer at the Daily Record. She also appears on TV and radio and chairs live events.
Shona Gossip is the live news editor at the Press and Journal and Evening Express in Aberdeen. She started out at the P&J as a trainee and has covered more than a decade of the north of Scotland's biggest stories. She enjoys working with the trainees within the newsroom and is looking forward to being part of the WiJS mentoring scheme.
Kathryn Samson is STV’s Westminster editor. She presents political coverage on STV News at Six and Scotland Tonight. She’s covered all the major political events of the last decade, including the Scottish independence referendum, Brexit, the COVID-19 pandemic and the Tory leadership crisis. In 2022 she was awarded Nations and Regions Presenter of the Year at the Royal Television Society Awards in London.
Helen McArdle is the health correspondent for The Herald. Since 2020, her focus has been on the impact of the pandemic on the NHS. She was named Specialist Reporter of the Year at the 2022 Scottish Press Awards and picked up the Stephen White Award for the Reporting of Science in a Non-Science Context at the Association for British Science Writers awards.
Alison Conroy is a digital sports journalist at Sky Sports. She also has more than 15 years’ experience in radio broadcasting and was sports editor at Radio Clyde before moving to the Scottish Premiership’s host broadcaster.
Sophie Pither is a freelance journalist specialising in food and travel articles for national newspapers and magazines. She has written for Condé Nast Traveller, The Times, the i, The Sunday Times, The Guardian and Olive magazine, among many others.
Catriona Stewart is a writer-at-large with The Herald. Her interests are social affairs, feminism, education and the complex issues in the Govanhill area of the city. She has also reported from Sierra Leone and the refugee camps along the Thailand/Myanmar border.
Rosalind Erskine is a Glasgow-based magazine editor turned digital editor, content creator and broadcaster who has worked in Scotland, London and Dubai. She currently edits a newly launched news and lifestyle website, GlasgowWorld, as well as writing about all things Scottish food and drink for the Scotsman. She also co-created, co-produces and hosts the newspaper’s award-nominated food and drink podcast, Scran, and is the restaurant reviewer for Scotland on Sunday.
Emily Yates is an accessibility consultant, journalist and speaker currently living in Glasgow after dividing her time between the UK and Rio de Janeiro where she worked with the underground transport system in order to promote inclusion for the 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games. She also wrote the Lonely Planet Guide to Accessible Rio de Janeiro that was endorsed by the International Paralympic Committee and given to over 2000 Paralympians.
Fiona McKay is a lecturer and researcher in journalism. She has a teaching focus on gender, media, and politics. Her professional experience also includes working as a freelance news reporter and digital reporter for six years, mostly for the Herald and Times Group (Newsquest) in Glasgow which includes the publications: the Herald, the Herald Online, the Sunday Herald and the Evening Times (now Glasgow Times).
Alex Watson is the head of comment for regional north and north-east Scotland news brands, the Press and Journal and Evening Express. She is also a regular columnist for the P&J, writing mainly about social issues.
Sally Hampton is a consumer magazines publisher at DC Thomson Media. She oversees a diverse portfolio of UK and Scottish interest magazine brands. Her role involves identifying opportunities to grow existing DC Thomson Media titles through innovation and expansion – and launching new products across a variety of platforms. Most recently, she was a key member of the team that delivered Platinum magazine, one of the biggest launches in consumer magazines in recent times. Sally is currently chair of PPA Scotland.
Monica Soriano is editor of the BBC News Technology and Innovation Story Team.
Gina Davidson is LBC's Scotland Political Editor after making the leap from newspapers to radio last year. Decades of working in the Scottish media mean she’s been lucky enough to win some awards, but mostly she’s been very privileged to report on people's lives and the things that matter to them the most.
Kirsty Wark is best known as an anchor on the BBC’s flagship news and current affairs show Newsnight. Kirsty has several major accolades to her name including BAFTA Awards for Outstanding Contribution to Broadcasting, Journalist of the Year and Best Television Presenter.
How to apply
To apply to have your media career shaped by this opportunity, fill in the below application form by December 13 2022.
This year we are also asking applicants to submit a short plan detailing what they would like to achieve with a mentor, including two goals.
Apply here.
Who can apply?
Early and mid-career women journalists working in Scotland will be chosen to take part in a year-long programme, which will include an hour a month of their mentor’s time, most likely on Zoom. WiJ Scotland defines a mid-career journalist as someone who feels they still have space to grow in their career and has specific goals they feel a mentor would help with.
Boosting the number of women of colour journalists and women sports journalists is one of our goals. Therefore, while the mentoring scheme is not generally open to student journalists, it is open to women of colour student journalists and students who want to be sports journalists.
Applicants must be a member of Women in Journalism Scotland. If you are not yet a member of Women in Journalism Scotland, join here.
Why mentoring?
We believe mentoring has the ability to change the future of journalism. That future features a more confident, diverse workforce, a greater prevalence of women’s voices and more women in senior positions.
How is the mentoring scheme judged?
Applicants will be selected by a panel led by the WiJ Scotland committee. The panel will study all the answers to the questions posed in each application and base its final decision on the journalists proving how much they would benefit from the programme. An additional factor will be which applicant best fits the skills and experience of the mentors.
When will I hear back?
We aim to contact all applicants by the end of December. Unsuccessful applicants will be provided with feedback.
For any questions, please email wijscotland@gmail.com