News with Suz: Introducing Helmet to Heels™
11/11 Armistice Day: launching a community to elevate the voices of Women Building Peace
What a way to bookend an 11 year BBC career: last night in London celebrating a nomination for Presenter of the Year by the Association of International Broadcasters with my support squad of producers, editors, friends.
Thank you especially to Ian Sherwood who launched my BBC career and powerhouse ladies Liz Gibbons, Vara Szajkowski and Nicola Addyman who guided me through some of the work I’m most proud of.
Congrats to Nicky Woolf who won. Thank you for the best dressed nod, AIBs 💃🏻
Speaking of fashion, I’m thrilled to announce my next move.
Goodbye BBC, hello Helmet to Heels™
On this 11/11 Armistice Day, inspired by a career shuttling Washington and warzones - from helmet to heels, the series I created at the BBC “Women Building Peace” and the many messages from my @kianpourworld followers asking for everything from News with Suz explainer videos to travel and fashion questions, I’m fully focused on new media and launching a digital brand called Helmet to Heels™: News. Travel. Fashion.
We’re creating a community where we come together to explain the world with context and nuance, elevate the voices of extraordinary women around the world, and crucially - have the hard conversations to find solutions to the world’s most pressing problems. And in the process, we lean into our feminine power and dynamism as women with various interests - from news to travel to fashion to finance.
My hypothesis for a social media experiment I started when I first became familiar with “the influencer” in Dubai last year has been confirmed since October 7: the algorithm favors verticals like fashion and travel, so in order to deliver the news to as many people as possible, it has to “newsfluence” the audience into paying attention. A screenshot of an important breaking news headline got 0 likes in 23 minutes. The same screenshot reposted with a fashion cover photo in a carousel got a like a minute.
The last month has proven another theory that I spent years telling my bosses: in the UCLA public diplomacy class I taught and my Georgetown fellowship, I found that younger audiences especially are hungry for current events - a mix of info and inspo, we just have to meet them where they are. And that’s not television, it’s social media.
The messages I’ve been flooded with in the last month thanking me for my coverage escalated this need for News with Suz to become formalized, not least because dis/misinformation is spreading like wildfire in a way I’ve never seen. As a political and foreign affairs journalist focused on national security for over a decade, this is an existential threat.
News with Suz will be the primary product in the Helmet to Heels™ community and I need your help to do it.
Join us, engage and subscribe.