Nisha Pillai joined BBC World News in October 1995. She is one of the main anchors on the channel, presenting its hourly news bulletins.

One memorable event during Nisha's career was the live coverage she presented of the September 11 attacks as they happened. She was on air from 8.50am New York time, when the first tower was hit, to 10.30am, by which time the Twin Towers had collapsed.

It was an extraordinarily challenging experience for an anchor to simultaneously make sense of an unfolding story which had no precedent, while keeping the audience informed of the latest information from the scene.

Six weeks later, shortly after the start of the Afghan war, Nisha hosted a live discussion programme from Islamabad which brought an audience from Pakistan "face to face" with an audience in New York. The gap in comprehension between the two sides was striking.

Another huge global event Nisha reported on was the most recent Iraq war. She described the fall of Baghdad on 9 April 2003, complete with the iconic pictures of the bringing down of Saddam's statue.

Shortly before the start of the conflict, Nisha hosted a live audience interaction programme from New York, which brought together ordinary people from the US and a similar group in the Jordanian capital, Amman. Like the earlier Islamabad/New York programme, the gap between the two sides was marked.

In 1998 Nisha presented BBC World News' coverage of Israel's 50th anniversary of independence from Jerusalem. She was also in Islamabad for Pakistan's 50th anniversary of independence.

Nisha's first job after leaving university was at Schroders Investment Bank as a graduate trainee. The Investors Chronicle, her next position, gave her the training in journalism that led to being a reporter on The Money Programme for the BBC.

In 1990, Nisha went on to report for Panorama, the BBC's flagship current affairs programme, where she worked for five years until 1995. Her most notable work for Panorama was a nine-month investigation into the financial empire of the notorious newspaper baron Robert Maxwell.

Nisha was born in Kolkata, but spent much of her childhood in Mumbai. She attended the London School of Economics and has a BSc in analytical economics.