Emma Macdonald OAM Member
Emma Macdonald OAM is a multi-award winning journalist, speaker and maternal health advocate. In the Queen’s Birthday Honours list in 2022 Emma was awarded a Medal of the Order of Australia for services to journalism and women. Emma began her career at the Australian Financial Review before moving to the Canberra Times where she spent 23 years covering federal politics from the Press Gallery, rising to become Bureau Chief. In 2016 Emma became the Associate Editor of online media platform HerCanberra. Emma has won numerous awards for her work – these include two Walkley Awards (1993, 2003) and selection as a national Walkley finalist (2001). She was awarded the John Douglas British Prize for Journalism in 1998, and in 2002 was awarded a Vincent Fairfax Ethics in Leadership Fellowship. She was highly commended for her political journalism through the Paul Lyneham Press Gallery Journalism Award in 2002 and was recognised as a University of Canberra Distinguished Alumni in 2011. She has been published widely, from The Times (UK) to the Business Standard (India), to Cosmopolitan Magazine. She is dedicated to promoting women in media – becoming Convener of Women in Media Canberra in 2015. In this role, Emma hosts regular live broadcast National Press Club addresses and founded the Caroline Jones Women in Media Young Journalists Award which is now in its seventh year. Emma has also been a Walkley Award judge across various categories and has mentored a series of journalists throughout her career. A mother of two, Emma co-founded the maternal health charity Send Hope Not Flowers in 2010, shortly after the birth of her daughter. She won an ACT Telstra Businesswoman of the Year Award for Send Hope’s work in 2016 which has raised more than one million dollars for safe birth programs and maternal health training across nine developing countries.
