Lukwesa Burak

Biography

Burak was born in Zambia in 1974, and named after her royal tribal family. She enjoyed animals, had a spider collection, and after capsizing on a fishing trip on the Zambezi river with her father, was hospitalised for four weeks having caught malaria.

Burak's family moved to England when she was aged eight. She had an interest in flying, so joined the Royal Air Force Air Training Corps, but had to leave after injuring her leg during a game of football. She then studied, gaining a bachelor's degree in Geography and European Studies at the University of Sussex, where she spent a year in Switzerland and resultantly speaks French. She was then awarded a European Union scholarship to complete a Master of Science degree at the University of Leicester.

Career

After three years in an information technology career, Burak started her media career as a broadcast assistant for BBC weather, and trained as a broadcast meteorologist during this time. She began broadcasting as a relief forecaster for BBC regions and nations, eventually joining BBC East Midlands as one of their permanent forecast team, before becoming the lunchtime news anchor.

Burak moved to Sky News in 2006. Her main role involved presenting Sky News overnight, with her typical shift starting at 0000 and ending at 0600. During this time she presented Sky News at 0000, Sky News On The Hour from 0100-03:00 and then Sky World News from 0300 – 0600, which caters for audiences within Europe, Asia and Africa. She left Sky News in 2012, but returned in 2013.

Burak featured on the cover of Issue 2 of UK Zambians Lifestyle Magazine in the summer of 2008. She was also appointed patron of the charity All Star Kids (1079911) at the start of December 2008. She is an ambassador for No More Malaria UK, as a result of her own personal experiences as a child. Since January 2011, she has been the director of hair products company Gidore.

In August 2012, Burak joined eNCA (eNews Channel Africa), based in South Africa. She said that she had to relocate to South Africa as her husband had been offered a new job there, but that she was very much looking forward to the opportunity to join the channel's Africa Edition team and to have the opportunity to conduct live interviews rather than dealing with predominantly pre-recorded material. But of her former employers, Sky News, she said: “ " Sky is an experience I would recommend to anybody. When you are working at that level in the industry, you could not ask for anything else". Lukwesa Burak re-joined Sky News in 2013. She has since joined the team of al Jazeera English in Doha

In May 2016 she re-joined BBC regions and nations, joining BBC East Midlands and BBC World News. She began presenting on the BBC News Channel on 13 August 2016. In September Burak became the main presenter of Inside Out East Midlands and the re-launched England edition which is a weekly round up of the three best reports from across the country.

Personal life

Burak enjoys reading, gardening, and would like to take-up fencing again. She lives in Leicester.