Hot Shots 2025: Em Clarke

Alongside Em Clarke’s production prowess – Matt Jacobs, a BBC production manager, praises her ability to “turn seemingly impossible tasks into achievable goals” – she’s become a go-to person for ensuring accessibility and inclusion are baked into operations.

Beginning her accessibility advocacy at the BBC, she’s revised callsheets and risk assessments to make them easier for everyone to understand, brought sensory considerations into production environments and introduced accessibility briefings to communicate strategies for working alongside disabled, neurodivergent and deaf people.

She’s also made sure that accessibility features are integrated into early planning. Jacobs explains: “She worked closely with broadcast engineers and directors to ensure that essential equipment and staff – for example, live captioners and sign-language interpreters – were accounted for from day one.”

This commitment to inclusivity came before her diagnosis of Type 1 diabetes in 2022. Since then, “she has persevered with resilience, integrity and a refusal to let her chronic illness define her,” says Jacobs.

Though Clarke recently moved to podcast maker Crowd Network, a TV doc about chronic illnesses that she pitched to a major streamer has been greenlit, so the industry certainly hasn’t seen the last of her.