Former Oprah Winfrey Show Producer and Piers Morgan Uncensored leader to oversee guest strategy across FlightStory, home of The Diary of a CEO
London – 21 January 206: Today, FlightStory, the global media and investment company co-founded by Steven Bartlett, has appointed Winnie Dunbar Nelson as Guest & Research Director. Nelson will lead guest strategy and research across the company’s award winning portfolio including Steven Bartlett’s ‘The Diary of a CEO’, Paul C. Brunson’s ‘We Need to Talk’, Maggie Sellers Reum’s ‘Hot Smart Rich’, Davina McCall’s ‘Begin Again’ and Dr. Kritsen Holmes’s ‘The Line’. Collectively FlightStory shows reach over 30M people every month.
Nelson brings over 20 years of experience from across the US and UK, including The Oprah Winfrey Show, NBC News, ITV, CNN, and The Tyra Banks Show. She has launched and shaped major programming, including the rollout of a 24-hour news channel and the creation of Piers Morgan Uncensored, which consistently drives news agenda. Most recently, Nelson spent two years at High Performance Studios. Over the last two decades her work has earned multiple Emmy Awards and the Monaco Film & TV Festival Breaking News Award. She is a BAFTA member.
A Londoner for the past decade, Nelson began her career in New York, and has built a reputation for identifying compelling stories and securing high-profile guests that deliver cultural impact.
Guest & Research Director, Winnie Dunbar Nelson, commented: “I’ve been lucky to work on some incredible shows with exceptional talent and teams in my career. Few opportunities have left me as excited as this one – building one of the biggest global media companies from the inside, at the forefront of the next generation of media.”
FlightStory CEO and Cofounder, Georgie Holt, added: “Winnie has spent two decades at the centre of the biggest conversations in media and she knows how to build guest line-ups that don’t just fill slots, they shape culture. At FlightStory, guest strategy is a growth lever: it sits at the intersection of storycraft, rigorous research and data science, powered by proprietary tools that help us map audience interests, track performance signals, and spot potential before it peaks. Winnie brings world-class editorial judgement, speed, and standards and she’ll help us build the next era of global shows with guests that shift culture, not just chase it.”
FlightStory operates across London, Manchester, Los Angeles, New York and Boston.
About Steven Bartlett and FlightStory
As a global media company, FlightStory is focused on developing influential IP and scaling global creator-led brands. It is built on the proprietary methodologies and technology that have driven the global success of the world’s second-biggest interview podcast and the second biggest podcast show globally.
DOAC now boasts 35 million followers, 14 million YouTube subscribers, 60+ million monthly listens/views, and by 2024 had achieved over 1 billion streams.
The show has become a cultural force and continues to grow at pace, adding 500K YouTube subscribers each month and boasting a 500% compound annual growth rate.
Founded in 2023, FlightStory has successfully launched brand new formats, including We Need To Talk with Paul C. Brunson and Davina McCall’s Begin Again, both reaching #1 on Spotify and Apple charts and with a combined social and podcast following of over 2.5M people and over 800M views across all channels since launch.
Dr Kristen Holmes, show The Line, launched in November 2025 with FlightStory and has already been named as Spotify’s best new podcast in 2025. A month later, FlightStory made a seven figure investment into Hot Smart Rich, Maggie Sellers Reum’s female ambition brand, with a goal of 10x growth. That year, DOAC’s commercial value tripled under FlightStory.
FlightStory is home to a publishing venture in partnership with Ebury, a division of Penguin Random House. Reaching global audiences with stories that resonate and inspire action, it is home to Steven Bartlett’s no 1 Sunday Times best-selling book Diary Of A CEO: The 33 Laws Of Business and Life, the fastest-selling book in its category since records began with over 1 million copies sold.
