Rachel Smalley

Rachel Smalley is an NBR columnist, the founder of The Medicine Gap which is a public storytelling campaign to highlight the human impact of New Zealand’s unfunded medicines crisis, and was most recently the host of First Light on TodayFM.

Smalley was a senior member of TV3’s news and current affairs team for over a decade reporting on major disasters including the Christchurch Earthquakes and the Pike River Mine tragedy.

She was a Foreign Correspondent for a number of years covering globally significant events such as the London Bombings, elections in France and Britain, and she was at The White House in 2008 reporting on Barack Obama’s historic election to the US Presidency.

Smalley has twice travelled to Afghanistan to report on the war, embedding with US troops on one occasion, and also travelling with NATO.

In 2015-2016, she spearheaded World Vision New Zealand’s most successful fundraising campaign reporting on the Syrian Refugee Crisis from Iraq, Turkey, Jordan, Serbia and Lebanon.

Alongside her journalism career and her work with The Medicine Gap, Smalley also works as a communications and storytelling consultant to the corporate and not-for-profit sectors, and MC’s events for a number of corporates and professional organisations.