From Idris Elba and Richard Branson to Serena Williams and Boris Johnson, former CNN correspondent and presenter Ayesha Durgahee has interviewed a diverse range of CEOs, politicians, actors and athletes covering business travel and tourism, design, the environment and sport. Ayesha was named Carlson Wagonlit Business Travel News Journalist of the Year 2010 for her investigative piece on aerotoxic syndrome affecting pilots and cabin crews, and won the same award in 2013 for the CNN Business Traveller Special "How to Build an Airbus A380 Superjumbo" where she followed the production process the largest commercial aircraft in the world to final assembly at the Airbus Headquarters in Toulouse, France. In 2016, Ayesha was invited to be on the judging panel of the Carlson Wagonlit Business Travel News Journalism Awards and later in 2017, was Head Judge of the BJTAs. As the resident reporter of the flagship feature show CNN Business Traveller, Ayesha built her reputation reporting on the aviation and hotel industry, securing exclusive interviews and exclusive access such as filming a PTC sitting on the runway lights at Frankfurt Airport as a Boeing 747 took off. Ayesha also co-presented episodes of the show in a series of training challenges – training to become a flight attendant with Gulf Air, a pilot with Etihad, an air traffic controller in Hungary and tackled the art of room service with the Four Seasons. Ayesha also guest presented factual shows on CNN such as Inside Africa from Uganda where she interviewed Africa's youngest billionaire Ashish Thakker, the one-hour Special - On the Move: Transport of the Future and the environmental show The Road to Durban where episodes where filmed in London, Berlin, Istanbul and Johannesburg. After almost a decade at CNN International, Ayesha moved on to pursue new adventures including, presenting a weekly football panel show on Bloomberg TV with guests such as former England and Arsenal Defender, Sol Campbell; and she has also presented feature shows for Reuters, most recently from the red carpet at the Cannes Film Festival 2017. Ayesha is currently a freelance journalist and presenter based in London.
