Mary Ann Sieghart spent 20 years as Assistant Editor and columnist at The Times and won a large following for her columns on politics, economics, feminism, parenthood and life in general. She has presented many programmes on BBC Radio 4, such as Start the Week, Profile, Analysis, Fallout and One to One.

She is a Visiting Professor at King’s College London and sits on numerous boards. She is Chair of the judges for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2022.



She spent 2018-19 as a Visiting Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, where she researched her book, The Authority Gap, on why women are taken less seriously than men.

Mary Ann spent 19 years as Assistant Editor of The Times, has written a weekly column in The Independent about politics, economics and social affairs, and presented Newshour, the BBC World Service’s flagship news and current affairs programme.

Before joining The Times, she was political correspondent of The Economist and City Editor of Today newspaper.

Mary Ann is a Non-Executive Director of the Guardian Media Group and Chair of the parent’s Investment Committee and Senior Independent Trustee of the Kennedy Memorial Trust.

She has sat on numerous other boards, including the Heritage Lottery Fund, the National Heritage Memorial Fund, the Social Studies Faculty of Oxford University, Women in Journalism and the National Council for One-Parent Families.