This girl is a real beauty from Sierra Leone, I haven't seen her for a while on Sky Sports News has she left?











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[img]http://rds.yahoo.com/_ylt=A9gnMiczxqNEZbIApCmjzbkF;_ylu=X3oDMTA4NDgyNWN 0BHNlYwNwcm9m/SIG=123q596pa/EXP=1151670195/**http%3a//tvnewsroom.co.uk/images/tn/ishasesay.jpg[/img]

Ok for all the Isha Sesay fan's like myself here ya go:



Isha Sesay is torn. The Sierra Leonean presenter is enjoying her newfound success in the UK as a TV presenter and rising media star for the BBC and CNN. However she fears daily for her family in conflict-ridden Sierra Leone. Her mother, Kadi Sesay is the Minister for Economic Development in Sierra Leone and plays a significant role in the rebuilding of the country. Isha is aware however, that with both her mother and her younger brother in Freetown she can never truly relax into the success she has found in the UK.

“Every time something kicks off in Sierra Leone I worry’ says the 24 year old who has just landed the role of presenting CNN’s city guides and is currently also appearing for BBC Scotland.

Family is incredibly important to Isha Sesay. Born in the UK she returned to Sierra Leone at the age of 7. Her father was then working as legal advisor to the SLPMB and her mother, armed with an MA and a PhD was a lecturer at Fourah Bay College, the University of Sierra Leone once known as the ‘Athens of West Africa.’ Theirs was a comfortable middle class life. Isha remembers being stunned by the amount of relatives she had on her first visit to Sierra Leone. “Aunts, cousins, uncles - there seemed to be hundreds of relatives. It made me feel very secure about who I am and that I belonged to Sierra Leone.� They weren’t rich but education and family values were very important to the Sesays.

“I remember as a child my father would never tell me the meaning of a word if I asked him,� laughs Isha, “he would also insist that I went to the dictionary and look it up for myself. At the time I was annoyed by it but I now realise he was teaching me to be a seeker of knowledge.�

It is an enduring legacy. Despite the death in 1988 of her beloved father from hepatitis caught on a trip to India, Isha Sesay has always been full of curiosity about the world around her. As a child she attended schools in Freetown and London and she now lives in Glasgow.
When asked what she remembers most about her early schooling in Freetown at Fourah Bay College School, she seems sad for a moment. It appears she was often bullied. Why, she doesn’t know but it may have been that her English ‘oyinbo’ accent already set her apart from many of her classmates.

“Also,� she muses, “I was never there for things like the summer holidays because we used to travel to England. And when you are a child, not being around for the six week vacation can make you seem almost like a stranger to everyone when you come back.�

It seems she has always been something of an outsider wherever she has lived, whether in the UK or Sierra Leone there was alway something special about her that set her apart from the rest. When asked if she thinks other children bullied her out of jealousy because of her looks and intelligence she laughs, “Oh gosh no. I wasn’t even pretty when I was young. I used to wear these horrible blue NHS glasses.� This however didn’t stop her from hanging out with her friends at the local hotspots like the Aqua Club and breaking the hearts of a few young Salone boys on the way. “I was terrible,� she giggles, “I was never in love with anyone in those days, I got bored with boys so quickly. They were so obvious and predictable�
Isha returned to the UK at 16 and went to school in North London. By the time she was doing her ‘A’ Levels she knew without a shadow of a doubt that she wanted to develop a career as an actress or TV presenter.

This was a brave move for a young middle class Sierra Leonean girl. With two parents achieving highly in the academic world, it was expected she would at least go on to read law or study medicine. Yet her passion for the media, and for television in particular, meant that she lost interest in studying for her A Levels.

She was therefore astonished when her career advisor at school suggested she sit the Oxbridge entrance examination. She did, and she passed. What she remembers is her mother’s delight that she was going to Cambridge University but the disappointment that Isha was going to read English and not Law! Nonetheless she says her mother is very proud of her successes and is “like a lioness with her cubs when it comes to her children.�

The family has known tragedy. Apart from the death of her father Isha has also coped with an older sister who is handicapped. She obviously adores her older sister and is fiercely protective of both her and her younger bother who lives in Freetown with his mother. “It’s funny my mother has ended up in politics,� says Isha “because we were never really a political family.� In 1992 Valentine Strasser, the then Head of State, invited Kadi Sesay who was already known for her probity and integrity to work as an advisor to his government.

Later President Kabbah asked Mrs Sesay to join his government. When her mother called Isha in the UK to break the news to her, Isha was in two minds. “On the one hand I wanted to fly to Sierra Leone and take my mother away and bring her to the UK to be with me. On the other hand, I understood her need to want to help put the country back on an even keel in terms of development and to attract funding for the country’s infrastructure which has been severely undermined by the chronic conflict.� Isha understands her mother’s desire to stay and help Sierra Leone out of the current economic impasse. She comes from a family with a history of public service “but to me she is just my mum, and sometimes I wish she was here with me.�

The impact of all of this on Isha is difficult to measure but she seems determined to succeed. While at university, she developed a passion for feminist politics and development issues. She readily admits that she has a strong role model in her own mother and this may have lead her to become a thorn in the side of the misanthropic male dominated society that pervades the Oxbridge academic scene. She says being black at Cambridge was not ‘a big issue’, but being female was. In an effort to fight the sexism that existed she took on the role of women’s officer in her college and started a women’s magazine which ‘named and shamed’ students who took sexual advantage of female students. “There was absolute outrage!� she laughs gleefully, thrilled with the impact she and her team made on the college campus. However this didn’t stop her from falling in love with one of the male students!
That relationship has since ended and she is now seeing someone else.

After achieving honours in her English degree, Isha offered herself to the BBC’s morning talk show programme Kilroy as an unpaid volunteer researcher. She enjoyed herself enormously on this programme that deals with current affairs and social issues. She was then invited onto Woman’s Hour - a BBC Radio 4 programme dealing with women’s issues. But she had barely been there a couple of weeks when the producer of Kilroy rang her to offer her a job on the show. They had liked her approach and work so much they wanted her on full-time as a paid employee. She researched on the programme for the rest of its run that year. In 1998 she went up to BBC Scotland where she worked as a researcher on the Kay Adam show. She then went on to work for a BBC Scotland radio multicultural show called ‘Ghettoblasting’ and, out of the blue, was asked to present a current affairs show for BBC Choice once a week. If it all sounds a bit exhausting, she managed to take it in her stride. “I felt I needed to learn all I could about working with autocues, cameras and scripts�.

She currently presents the city guide series for CNN’s Hotspots and is presenter for CNN’s art series, The Artclub. Derek Guthrie who produces Hotspots and the Artclub for CNN says of Isha, “She is amazing. We’ve taken her to Botswana, Jordan, and Sardinia. She has had to sleep outside in tents in the desert and yet she never complains. She is a true professional and the camera and audiences really respond to her positively.� Isha also presents BBC Scotland’s Feeling Good a lifestyle series on health and leisure. In this series Isha can be seen doing all kinds of outdoor activities, from roller blading to hot air ballooning. “Actually the hot air ballooning was so terrifying I made the old lady with me hold my hand while we were doing it!� laughs Isha.

She has also just completed a series of pilot or test shows for BBC1. She is up for a key role as the presenter of a programme, that she describes as a cross between the Krypton Factor and Mastermind. Peter Salmon, the former Controller of BBC 1 and now Director of Sport for the BBC, says of Isha: “Isha has got some vital qualities - she’s warm, bright and very attractive. She’s one to watch and she’s ambitious and determined - one of tomorrow’s potential stars.� Praise indeed from one of the UK’s most powerful media barons.
So how does Isha view the future? “I want to be the next Parky,� she says referring to the veteran of personal interviews, the BBC’s Michael Parkinson. “No, actually,� she adds, “I want to be a cross between Parky and Ian Wright (the famous Arsenal footballer who has gone on to have a successful career in television presenting).� Her favourite media personality is Davina McCall who presented Channel 4’s huge success, Big Brother.

With her looks, brains and great personality it is no wonder Isha has managed to attract the attention of Mike Hollingsworth, one of Britain’s most important celebrity agents. With backing like that we’ll be seeing even more of her on our screens in the future.

I have to say girls who i've met from Sierre Leone and Senegol have been very attractive.

She's fineeee...............I have seen her in CNN.