Chakrabarti was born in Ealing, London to an Indian Bengali family and was raised in Birmingham, also having spent time in India as a teenager at the Calcutta International School in Kolkata. Chakrabarti arrived at the University of Oxford in 1984. She completed a degree in English and French from Exeter College, where she graduated in 1988, and also spent a year in France while a student. Of her time at Oxford, Chakrabarti said, "I loved my time there. There weren’t – then – many people from my background at university. But that didn’t stop my experience from being overwhelmingly good."
Career
In 1994, Chakrabarti became a reporter for the Breakfast Programme on the newly launched BBC Radio 5 Live. She later became a general news correspondent working on television as well as radio. In 1997, she became the BBC Community Affairs correspondent, covering the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry and also working on Home Affairs. In 1999 Chakrabarti secured her role as political correspondent for the BBC, working across a range of programmes in television and radio, reporting on politics for BBC One, BBC Two, the BBC News Channel, BBC Radio 4 and BBC Radio 5 Live. In January 2011 she was the education correspondent for BBC News. In May 2014 she was appointed as news presenter on BBC One and the BBC News Channel. Reeta has chaired and hosted numerous corporate events, including the 2003 and 2004 Educational Television Awards Dinners for the Royal Television Society. She also hosted the 2018 TV Journalism awards for the RTS. In April 2018, she acted as host for the opening of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting at Buckingham Palace. In October 2019, it was announced that Reeta Chakrabarti was to follow Dr John Sentamu as Chancellor of York St John University. Her innaguration is due for 2020.
Chakrabarti is married and lives in North London. She has three children. She is a fan of the poet John Keats and chose this as her specialist subject on the BBC television quiz Celebrity Mastermind broadcast on 22 December 2016. Reeta is a Patron of Pan Intercultural Arts, a UK charity that uses the arts to empower marginalised young people and unlock their potential. She is also a patron of the Oxford University Media Society, and an ambassador for the Keats Shelley Memorial Association in Rome.
