Sarah Masiyiwa honoured in the UK

SARAH Masiyiwa, the daughter of Zimbabwean billionaire Strive Masiyiwa and his wife Tsitsi Masiyiwa, has expressed her delight after being honoured as one of the brightest and most promising individuals from across the television industry in the United Kingdom.

Broadcast a monthly magazine for the United Kingdom television and radio industry, Thursday named Masiyiwa as one of the rising stars in the industry through its emerging talent initiative dubbed Hot Shots 2023.

Hot Shots seeks to celebrate people who are excelling early on in their professional lives and those further along who have injected momentum into their careers with significant recent achievements.

Sarah, who has made a name for herself as a journalist, filmmaker and development researcher said he was honoured to be recognised for her work.

"Being praised in a magazine for watching insane amounts of TV is all 14-year-old me dreamed of. Yesterday, @broadcastnow_mbi announced that I was one of their hot shots for 2023 in the field of TV development. Feeling extremely honoured. I can't help but think: we are a privileged few, those of us who get to make a living doing exactly the thing we love to do," Masiyiwa said in a statement on her official Instagram page.

Masiyiwa, who grew up in Zimbabwe and South Africa before moving to London with her family, is a graduate of the New York Film Academy's post-graduate course.

Prior to film school, she graduated from New York University (NYU) with an Economics and Journalism degree.

Over the last few years Masiyiwa has gained valuable experience working in the creative production unit of the Atlanta-based multinational news channel CNN.

Working as a researcher, scriptwriter and production assistant, she worked on many factual programs that were broadcast on CNN.

She also worked as a Production Coordinator and Development Researcher for Violet Films, a UK-based production company known for Oscar winning documentary The White Helmets.

Sarah, who admittedly has an infectious love of documentary, is currently with Sky Studios Factual, whose head of development Jonathan Parker described her as a valuable asset due to her knowledge and experience.

"As well as being a fanatical watcher of docs, with an encyclopaedic knowledge, Sarah combines e­ffortless natural talent with diligent hard work," said Parker.

"She's amazing at drilling down into the detail of a story to find what really matters."

In addition to her position with the Sky Studios Factual development team which she took up earlier this year, Masiyiwa has had a production co-ordinator role on Heart Of Invictus (Netflix), about Invictus Games contestants, while a short doc she made got into the DOC NYC Film Festival a few years ago.

Since joining the Sky unit, she has quickly made her mark, combining natural talent with a conscientious work ethic and an eye for the detail of factual storytelling.

According to Broadcast, Masiyiwa has introduced a new technique for mapping out story beats for films in development, which has helped the team to find the shape of stories.

"She has also spotted several story ideas that have now made their way into further development. Masiyiwa is currently working on her own documentary short film – for which she went filming in Uganda earlier this year," the magazine wrote.