BBC World Service reporter and current mentee Sophia Smith Galer has just earned herself one of the Annual MHP 30 To Watch: Young Journalist Awards for culture, entertainment and lifestyle reporting.

Sophia credits her JST mentor, C4N’s foreign correspondent Jonathan Rugman, for giving her the confidence ‘to always bolsh forth with my random story ideas’. Jonathan replied: ‘I have never felt less responsible, Sophia! You’ve got oodles of oomph as well as talent and deserve to be the rising star you are’. And so say all of us!

In the same week, Sophia hit the national press with her documentary, DNA and Me, for the BBC World Service.