Stephanie Busari

Stephanie Busari is a journalist and senior editor at CNN Worldwide. She heads up CNN’s Nigeria bureau where she pioneered CNN’s first digital and multiplatform bureau.

She also reports on-air for CNN International and oversaw the network’s Nigerian 2019 election coverage.

Busari oversees CNN Africa’s digital’s editorial and operational strategy and is passionate about crafting a new narrative for African storytelling and telling stories about Africa’s changemakers and innovators.

In April 2016 she exclusively obtained the ‘proof of life’ video that showed that the missing Chibok schoolgirls were still alive. This video helped to kickstart negotiations with Boko Haram and secured the release of more than 100 of the kidnapped schoolgirls.

Busari is a passionate community activist who curated TEDxBrixton for three years before she left London. She founded TEDxBrixton in 2013 driven by a desire to bring disparate elements of her community together and to create a platform for those who wouldn't normally have one to share their ideas worth spreading.

She was also an instrumental member of the CNN team that won a Peabody Award in May 2015 for the network’s coverage of the missing Nigerian schoolgirls.

Busari won a Hollywood Gracie Award in 2017 for her persistence in covering this story and is also a previous recipient of the Outstanding Woman in the Media Awards.

In 2017, she was named one of the Most Influential People of African descent in a UN-backed award and in May 2020, she was listed among 25 of the most powerful female journalists in Africa by Women in Journalism Africa. She was also selected as a Yale University 2020 World Fellow, a fellowship for rising global leaders.