Thank you so much to everyone who supported and shared this fundraiser for Uni Pod 26 which was a fantastic success.!!!! Your contributions are hugely appreciated and will directly supported the event which was held at Birmingham City Uni on May 8 2026. The fundraiser is now closed and funds are being transferred. Thank you again for all your support.

I'm Nina and I've been working in media for most of my working life, in elite newsrooms at the BBC where I've often been the lone voice saying my thing about 'but what about X or Y' like it's not rocket science but when the diversity in the room reduces to a narrow frame of reference, well it becomes more valuable to have people like me in media. I went to a comprehensive school, I'm a Punjabi Sikh woman with a Brummie accent. My mom worked in a saucepan factory (which makes me proud) and my dad was a centre lathe turner (which also makes me proud). I had the opportunity to study at Oxford University and that gave me privileged access into journalism. I left the BBC a few years ago to start up a media start up Soundtruism in my home city. I also set up a podcast festival Uni Pod to platform underrepresented voices. It's been running now for three years. Last year I managed to bring on board sponsors BBC Sounds and Amazon Music. It paid for all my speakers and the team who helped to stage the event. Over the past three years it has achieved so much...like university partnerships expanding in 2026. Bringing key figures from UK podcasting together like the Managing Director of The Radio Academy, CEO of Audio UK and Head of Global Podcasts for Amazon Music to talk about gender inequity in UK podcasting.

In 2024 we welcomed George The Poet for a special tribute to Birmingham legend Benjamin Zephaniah. In 2023 we heard from Marcus Ryder MBE for a panel talk on Decolonising Podcasting and our 2025 headliner was the unapologetic Black feminist podcaster and author, Kelechi Okafor. There have been workshops on narrative design, investigations and interview techniques, sports podcasts, tech tools and more - delivered by people doing those jobs for real. It's a festival that inspires but is grounded in the practical. Our audience is students (16-24) and regional podcasters. A central ethos brings us all together - to centralise the importance of widening the pool of people who can make it to the top of UK podcasting. Because at the moment, the state of play is pretty woeful tbh. Joe Rogan is the UK's top podcaster ffs and there were no women of colour in the top 25 list! Help me to develop and inspire next-gen talent who come from all different backgrounds, to reflect who we really are and what we really think and believe. Please support Uni Pod 2026.