Samantha Simmonds

Samantha Rose Simmonds (born 21 August 1973) is an English newsreader, television presenter and journalist. She was a news anchor for Sky News until July 2016.

Simmonds was born in Bradford and grew up in Leeds where she attended Leeds Girls' High School. She studied for a BA at Liverpool University. Whilst a student in Liverpool, she appeared as a contestant on the ITV television show Blind Date. Samantha was raised in a "culturally Jewish" home.

After gaining a postgraduate diploma in Broadcast Journalism from City University in London in 1995, she worked as a reporter for local radio in Yorkshire before moving to London for a job as a producer on Channel Five News. She was later a presenter on BBC Breakfast and spent two years reporting and presenting BBC London's news programmes before joining Sky News in 2005. While presenting that channel, she was the first British journalist to break the story of Michael Jackson's death. Simmonds left Sky News in 2016, along with several other anchors, as part of a cost-cutting exercise. She can now be seen presenting on BBC World News, which she joined in March 2017.