I am an Executive Producer primarily responsible for the development, production and delivery of documentaries, studio-based programmes and outside broadcasts for BBC Television’s London Factual Department.

In 2005, I recruited Hina Zaidi to join my production team, primarily to take on programme and development research for my unit’s arts and history documentary and studio-based output.

Throughout the three years that I worked with Hina, I found her to be an outstanding researcher, assistant producer, and latterly, a very talented and creative producer-director. When performing a wide range of research tasks, including contributor finding and liaison, treatment and script writing, ideas generation and fact-checking, Hina was always very diligent, rigorous and enthusiastic, and adopted an intelligent and extremely well-organised approach to the tasks at hand. As you might expect from someone with previous experience in news and current affairs broadcasting, she possessed sound editorial skills, demonstrated great tenacity and exceptional interpersonal skills, and used her extensive reservoir of journalistic contacts to track down and secure important contributions from distinguished and high-profile guests.

Hina proved to be a versatile, supportive, hard-working and popular colleague, whose skills and experience were highly respected and greatly valued within her team. Consequently, I have no hesitation in recommending her for a range of TV production roles, and I would be delighted to work with her again in the future.

If you need any further information from me, do feel free to get in touch.

David Okuefuna, Executive Producer, BBC Television (London Factual)