“There have been times when I’ve felt like I’m really different, and I stand out like a sore thumb, but I think that is changing.”

Basingstoke-born journalist Sima Kotecha is a respected BBC reporter who is used to presenting in front of an audience of millions.

And yet according to recent figures, Sima’s background means she remains in a minority of state-educated reporters and journalists of colour at the Beeb.

Around 13 per cent of employees at the BBC and other broadcasters were privately educated, compared with seven per cent of the overall population.

While staff at the BBC (60 per cent) are also more likely to have been brought up by parents in professional occupations, against a national average of 33 per cent.

In her own words, Basingstoke-born Sima was born on a council estate in Popley. Was state-educated at Richard Aldworth School and is the daughter of a bus driver.

But Sima says she believes background shouldn’t determine your place in life, and says perseverance and determination is the best advice she can give any young person hoping to follow in her footsteps.

“Your dreams can come true. I dreamt of being on television, I’m now on television. You can make things happen. I was not an A grade student, I never did brilliantly academically, but I have determination, persistence and perseverance, and I have a great support network. And all of that has got me to where I am,” she told The Gazette, in an interview about her career this week.

“I didn’t come from anything special. So don’t think you can’t achieve things because of your background and your upbringing. You can do anything you set your mind to.”

Being a woman of colour who hails from a working-class family, and the first in her family to attend university, Sima says she is “passionate” about diversity within the industry.

The reporter said: “The BBC is very much aware of increasing diversity. It’s done really well over the last five years, I would say. The new director general Tim Davie has come in and said one of his top priorities is to bring in people of different classes, different races, disability, to really diversify the organisation.

“However, looking at media organisations as a whole, there’s still a long way to go. There have been times when I’ve felt like I’m really different, and I stand out like a sore thumb, but I think that is changing. I think there was a time when organisations went for people who came from Oxbridge, first class degree, went to boarding school. And it’s not holding anything against those individuals.

“But if you put the same people in a pot you’re going to get the same output. And if you want to diversify your viewers, your listeners, your readers, it’s really important to have a pot of different voices. I think there’s a real need to keep bringing those different voices to the forefront.”

She added: “Part of the skill is to admit that there’s a challenge, and then taking steps to solve it. I’m doing a lot of business news, and with Black Lives Matter, there’s so many corporate companies that have come out and said exactly that. They’ve made a pledge by this time next year things will have changed, they’ll have more diverse voices in their organisations, and i think people are a lot more aware of making sure they have a cosmopolitan workforce.

“But if in five years time we’re still having this conversation, it would be disappointing, because I feel as if it’s about action now, it’s not just about rhetoric. And it’s really important that things do change, otherwise it’s disheartening for people.

“I feel like we’ve been here before in the sense that there’s been a story somewhere and there’s been a real burst in conversation around diversity, but then it kind of fizzles away. But this time it does feel different, it feels like there is change.”

However, having been on the receiving end of both abuse and prejudice at times in her career, Sima said it’s not enough to just make a “token hire”.

“I also feel very strongly about not hiring people because they tick a box,” she explained.

“I think it’s really important to hire people because they’re good at their job, and I think it’s a fine line. I’ve had people in my career say to me you’ll get that job because you’re brown and they need one brown person. And you just think, hang on a minute, I’m actually a really good journalist. I’ve broken several stories, I’ve done x, y, and z. And it’s really hurtful when people think that.”

Reflecting on her childhood in Basingstoke, Sima said she and her brother were the first ethnic minority children at Hatch Warren Primary School.

She said: “It was a completely different era. Basingstoke was nowhere near as diverse as it is today. Back then, every class I was in, I can’t remember a time I wasn’t the only person of colour. In a way, when I reflect on that now, I think it was healthy because I was kind of oblivious to it. When you’re that young, you don’t think deeply about these issues as we might do today, where conversations around race are so much more overt. I just integrated automatically because I didn’t know any different, it was what I was used to.”

“I had to work really hard, I couldn’t speak English until I was five. My grandmother lives with us and, because she couldn’t speak English, we spoke Gujrati in the house all the time. My parents say I’d come home from primary school and I’d burst into tears. I didn’t understand what people were saying. And then one week, my mum says, I just came home and I just started speaking English! It clicked. Children obviously have a lot more capability of picking up languages very quickly if they’re immersed in them than adults do. We have something in our brain. So I picked it up and then my mum said I was away with it, I just never looked back.”

Sima says she was “never an A grade student” but had a flair for theatre, though the early journalistic instinct was perhaps more present than she realised.

“I love asking questions that others might find difficult to ask. I’ve always naturally been nosy. My mum said when I was younger I used to ask people really embarrassing questions,” she said.

It was when Sima progressed through to QMC, Surrey University and onto a masters’ degree in media and politics that she truly found her desire to work in the media.

She said: “I did my thesis in ‘spin’. It was during the era of Mandleson and Alastair Campbell and I was fascinated by how they were manipulating the media if you like, to get their political messages across. I then started looking at journalism in a different way, reading stories in a different way.”

Sima thanks her father for a chance encounter with a BBC film crew that helped give her a break, saying: “He is actually the one that I kind of owe credit to, because he was driving one day and saw a BBC crew filming something in a field. He stopped his car, he got out of the car, and he went and said to the journalist ‘Hello, what do you do?’.

“He said he was a reporter for South East Today, and my dad said my daughter really wants to be a journalist and he gave my dad his card. My dad always laughs because when I’m having a bad day I say it’s your fault!

“I always say to young journalists now, if you want something you’ve got to go for it. It is an uphill struggle, it’s a really competitive field.”

While on a research internship at BBC Berkshire, Sima used the database of contacts to appeal to editors across the world for opportunities. One told her she wasn’t good enough to make it as a reporter. But Jeremy Hillman, then the bureau chief of the BBC office in New York, offered a placement, and six months turned into seven years of work.

Sima’s career has seen her fly all over the world to report on some of the worst crisis impacting humanity from the Haiti earthquake in 2010 to the Syrian refugee crisis.

Most recently, Sima has moved into business news, saying: “It is really interesting at a time when the economy is obviously in an appalling situation. I’ve always wanted to be seen as somebody who can turn her hand to anything.”

Sima said her advice is to have determination and a good support network in place.

She said: “You never know what’s round the corner, but it is about persistence, it is about determination and having supportive people around you as well who believe in you.

“I am very lucky that my father is one of the most positive people I know and will always pick me up when I’m feeling a bit low.”