Maya Jama

About

Maya Indea Jama ( MY-AH JAH-mə; born 14 August 1994) is a British broadcaster and media personality. She rose to prominence as a presenter on MTV and BBC Radio 1. She has presented television shows including The Circle (2017), Glow Up: Britain’s Next Make-Up Star (2021–2022), and Love Island (2023–present). Since 2025, Jama has appeared as a panellist on The Masked Singer. She hosted #DriveWithMaya on Rinse FM from 2014 to 2017, and co-presented Radio 1’s Greatest Hits and presented her eponymous show, Maya Jama on BBC Radio 1 from 2018 to 2020.

Jama was born and raised in Bristol, where she attended Cotham School. She is of Somali descent on her father’s side, while her mother is of Scottish and Swedish descent. Her mother, Sadie Li Hadden, was 19 when she gave birth to Jama, and she named her after the US author and poet Maya Angelou. She also has a brother.
Jama’s father was in prison for most of her childhood, for violence-related crimes such as pub brawls and fights. Aged 12, she decided to stop visiting her father in prison and for a decade blocked him from her thoughts. She said in a 2017 interview with The Guardian that she did not really notice it being a…