Bloomberg Launches News Voices Initiative in Dubai

Bloomberg recently announced the expansion of its New Voices initiative to the Middle East at an event held in its Dubai office and attended by 50 public relations and finance professionals from the region. Dubai is the latest city to join New York, San Francisco, London, Toronto and Hong Kong in the New Voices initiative; Sydney and Mumbai will join later this year.

The program, which is funded by Bloomberg, provides one-on-one media training for top women executives in finance and business with the goal of getting the women TV-ready for interviews on Bloomberg TV and other outlets, ultimately improving the representation of women experts’ and opinions in the media industry. Since the launch of the initiative last year, 60 women have been media trained. With the addition of Dubai, Sydney and Mumbai to the program in 2019, almost 100 more women experts are expected to benefit from the initiative by the end of the year.

Speaking at the event, Laura Zelenko, Bloomberg News Senior Executive Editor for Diversity, Talent, Standards and Training said: “Many of the women we trained have already appeared on our own broadcasts or those of our competitors. Our efforts to diversify sourcing have led us to tell new, compelling stories about women bond fund managers who have outperformed, or amplify the calls of lesser known women economists who were prescient or reveal allegations of misconduct or bias that would have otherwise gone unreported.”

May Nasrallah, Executive Chairman, deNovo Corporate Advisors, also spoke about the importance of increasing the visibility of women in media and finance. She discussed her own experiences of working for Morgan Stanley across numerous roles and locations, including New York, Hong Kong, London and Dubai before establishing deNovo.

Zelenko also provided an overview of the progress Bloomberg News continues to make in amplifying women’s voices across platforms:

• Bloomberg News’ global database of women experts has quadrupled last year to more than 2,300 names.
• The percentage of women guests brought in as expert commentators on Bloomberg TV climbed to 19% in 2018, up from 10% at the end of 2017. The aim is to reach at least 30% this year.
• The percentage of stories that quote or cite a woman expert on Bloomberg’s TOP, or front, pages has increased to almost 10% from about 2.5% in March and is growing at an average pace of 13% a week.

To apply or nominate someone for the program, please click here.

Find out more about how Bloomberg is advancing women at the company, in the workplace, in the news and in the world.