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Born in Llwynypia, Rhondda, Carolyn Hitt read English at Oxford University and, after gaining the Thomson Regional News Certificate of Journalism as a trainee reporter on the Neath Guardian and Merthyr Express, began her career on The Western Mail.

Here she became Features Editor and won Welsh Feature Writer of the Year, before switching to broadcasting, joining the independent production company Presentable.

In 2012 she co-founded Parasol Media, whose productions included ´óÏó´«Ã½2’s Only Connect and numerous documentary, history, sport, music and entertainment programmes and multi-media projects.

Carolyn has presented programmes for ´óÏó´«Ã½1, ´óÏó´«Ã½2, ´óÏó´«Ã½ Wales, ITV Wales, Radio 4 and Radio Wales and as a Bafta Cymru and Celtic Media Award-nominated producer has worked with some of Wales’s most famous names including Dame Sian Phillips, Gabby Logan, Max Boyce, Cerys Matthews, Eve Myles, Sir Gareth Edwards and Baroness Tanni Grey Thompson.

She has delivered some of ´óÏó´«Ã½ Wales’s biggest audience figures with large-scale entertainment TV shows and created the multi-platform media project Hidden Heroines that helped secure the first statue of a named woman in Wales.

As an independent, Carolyn had a creative relationship with Radio Wales for more than 20 years, producing live daily and weekend strands, documentaries, factual series, comedy shows and themed curations of the entire schedule.

She has combined her broadcasting career with written journalism, contributing to The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph and numerous magazines and for 30 years was The Western Mail’s award-winning weekly columnist. In 2020 she won Columnist of the Year at the Society of Editors UK Regional Press Awards for the third year running.

She has proved a female pioneer in sports media. In 1998 Carolyn was the first woman to win Welsh Sports Journalist of the Year and went on to win the award for the whole of the UK. She also became the first woman to win The Welsh Sports Hall of Fame Journalist of the Year and in 2016 she was the first woman to win the Society of Editors UK Regional Press Awards Sports Journalist of the Year.

She has written on rugby for the Daily Telegraph, L’Equipe and the WRU. In 2012 she published her first sports book – Wales Play In Red, which featured interviews with some of the biggest names in the game and some of rugby’s most stellar fans. In 2015 she published her second book, Welsh Rugby in the 70s.

She has created myriad sports programmes including histories of the Olympics, Commonwealth Games, Six Nations and British and Irish Lions and TV sports entertainment formats celebrating the Rugby World Cup and marking the 70th birthday of Sir Gareth Edwards. In 2019 she presented the acclaimed ´óÏó´«Ã½ Wales documentary The Rugby Codebreakers and has contributed to Scrum V, Slammed and Amazon Prime’s global series The Story of Rugby as well as providing punditry for Radio Wales, Radio 4 and Five Live.

One of her proudest achievements, however, remains beating a 15-year-old Gary Barlow in the ´óÏó´«Ã½â€™s schools carol-writing competition A Song for Christmas in 1986…not that it held Gary back! As the producer kindly offered Carolyn ´óÏó´«Ã½ work experience through her subsequent student years, it proved the spark that lit the flame of her broadcast aspirations.

In September 2022 Carolyn joined ´óÏó´«Ã½ Cymru Wales as Editor Radio Wales and Sport.