Melisa Idris

A journalist with 17 years’ experience on various media platforms — newswire, print, online, radio and television. She is currently Assistant Vice President, Lead Editor & Anchor at Astro Awani News Network where she host the flagship English language talk show ‘Consider This’ as well as ‘The Future Is Female’.

Prior to her foray into television, she honed her broadcast skills in radio as the Executive Producer and Anchor of the morning drive-time show for BFM89.9, Malaysia's only independent radio station.

In her broadcast career, she interviewed senior policymakers, corporate leaders and international newsmakers, including:

• Olympic gold medallist sprinter Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce
• Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz
• Theoretical physicist Professor Michio Kaku
• The world’s first humanoid Artificial Intelligence, SOPHIA the Robot
• UN Assistant Secretary-General Kanni Wignaraja
• Social media mogul Gary Vaynerchuk, better known as Gary Vee
• A host of prominent Malaysian politicians including Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad, Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim, Tan Sri Rafidah Aziz, Khairy Jamaluddin, and many others.

She holds a Master in Journalism from the University of New South Wales, Sydney, and am an Economics, Public Administration & Politics graduate from University Malaya.

In 2017, she was chosen to participate in one of the most prestigious fellowships in journalism, the Wolfson Press Fellowship at the University of Cambridge in the UK. There she spent an academic term as a Press Fellow, researching Post-Truth and the spread of ‘fake news’ and disinformation.

In 2022, she was listed in the inaugural ‘Wiki Impact 100’ as a changemaker in the area of influence and communications creating real impact in Malaysia.