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Louise Ridley is an award-winning journalist based in London. Since April 2024, she has been the Editorial Director of The Female Lead.

Louise has 17 years of experience across digital, print and audio journalism. She specialises in editing features and longform and running special editorial projects, and has covered news, politics, social affairs, gender, science, media and advertising and youth issues.

In 2023 Louise was part of the ONA’s prestigious Women’s Leadership Accelerator, a year-long global programme that “supercharges leadership and management skills of women who are pushing digital innovation”.

Her former roles include Senior Features Editor at Business Insider UK, Senior Journalist at BBC NewsBeat, Special Projects Editor at HuffPost UK, and the first Longform and Special Projects Editor for BuzzFeed UK, which was named Website of the Year at the 2018 Society of Editors Press Awards.

Work Louise edited has been longlisted for the Orwell Prize and shortlisted for the British Journalism Awards. She was a finalist in the Women of the Future Awards 2017, shortlisted for Digital Journalist of the Year at the AOP Awards 2016, and named one of The Drum’s 50 Under 30 Women In Digital 2015.

With other female journalists, she co-founded The Second Source to address sexual harassment in journalism and help to diversify the industry. She was invited to speak at the International Journalism Festival in Perugia 2018 about this work.

On this site you can find out more about her journalism career, examples of her editing and writingmedia appearances and other work, and how to get in touch.