Tasmin Lucia-Khan is a British film producer, television personality, news anchor and entrepreneur. In the UK, she is most known for being the face of BBC ThreeNews, hosting E24 on BBC News, and fronting the morning news for ITV Breakfast show Daybreak now known as Good Morning Britain. She was appointed CEO of Hollywood film company WR Entertainment in 2016 and subsequently took the company public on the Oslo Stock Exchange Merkur Market.
Early life
Born Farhana Tasmin Lucia-Khan in London, she is of Bengali descent. Khan graduated from the University of Oxford with an Honours degree in Politics, Philosophy and Economics. At Oxford, she took up debating and nurtured her passion for international relations and current affairs. She studied Latin, Economics and Mathematics at A Level.
Media career
In 1999, Khan started her career at Zee TV Network as an entertainment presenter and news reporter. She then hosted her own talk show interviewing celebrities from music and film, sports and politics. In 2001, she interviewed Bill Clinton a few months after he completed his second term as President of the United States. She worked as a radio presenter for the BBC Asian Network, covering programmes like the Breakfast Show, Drive Time and The Album Chart. She was on air when news of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami broke on Boxing Day in December 2004. She then worked for PTV Prime as London correspondent where she reported the UK's big news stories to a worldwide audience including the 7 July 2005 London bombings and the Ipswich serial murders in 2006. Having produced and hosted her own sports show on Channel 5 for three years, she then landed the opportunity to present on BBC News and BBC Three. One of her mentors was Kevin Bakhurst who was the Editor of the Ten O’Clock News on BBC, and moved on to be the Controller of BBC News. Bakhurst and Danny Cohen, then controller of BBC Three, offered her the job to be the face of the news bulletins on 60 Seconds on BBC Three, and be lead anchor of E24 on BBC News. In her years at the BBC, she covered the biggest showbiz news stories, including the deaths of Michael Jackson, Heath Ledger, and Alexander McQueen. She also covered the Paul McCartney and Heather Mills divorce and the Oscars ceremony three years in a row. On 6 September 2010, she joined the ITV Breakfast programme Daybreak after being headhunted from the BBC to be the sole news anchor covering all major world news stories as well as domestic, political and economic stories from the UK. She led the news teams through the 2011 London Riots, the uprisings in Egypt, Libya and Syria, and broke the news of the death of Osama bin Laden. She left ITV News and morning TV in 2012 to pursue other opportunities in America after 15 years on UK television. From 2013 onwards, she was on US television as NBC Extra's 'Special Correspondent' conducting celebrity interviews, and both entertainment and news stories ranging from the birth of the royal babies in the UK to red carpet coverage of major film premieres. In January 2016, she was appointed CEO of Film company WR Entertainment, a publicly-traded company that had acquired the motion-picture rights to all 83 books in the Morgan Kanebest selling book series which had sold over 20 million copies worldwide. In April 2016, she raised $3.5 million in working capital for the film company from the likes of Norwegian billionaires Bjørn Kjos and Arne Blystad. The first movie from the Morgan Kane film franchise was planned to start filming in 2016, but no news of any production dates has been announced yet.
Other activities
Khan hosted the 2010 Commonwealth Games 'Queens Baton Relay' at Buckingham Palace, alongside Queen Elizabeth II and the President of India, to launch the baton on its journey to Delhi for the 2010 Games. She has hosted the annual BCA Gala Awards ceremony every year from 2007 to 2015. the Scottish Asian Business Awards in Glasgow in 2008 and 2009; and presented the Basis Soft Expo 2009 and an HIV/AIDS Conference in 2009, both in Dhaka. In 2010 and 2011, she hosted the Spice Times Restaurant Awards. In May and June 2009, she was part of a delegation to Bangladesh, organised by the British Government'sForeign Office as part of their Counter Terrorism strategy. Khan is a keynote speaker on topics covering technology, media and advertising, and she spoke at the inaugural Periscope Summit in New York on 23 September 2015 on issues ranging from the impact of Periscope on both news organisations and user communities to highlighting the many positive uses of Periscope for charitable causes.
Awards, nominations and honours
Khan was nominated for the Young Achiever of the Year honour at the Asian Woman Awards for Excellence in 2008. Khan is an ambassador for the Prince of Wales' charity, the British Asian Trust, which has touched the lives of more than 1 million people in the poorest communities in South Asia. Khan was named Entrepreneur of the Year by the Lloyds Banking Group in 2014 for her leadership of mobile advertising company AdMaxim and several other technology starts in the Silicon Valley.
