[1] McDoom was born and educated in London, England[citation needed] and graduated with a master's degree from the University of Edinburgh.
[2] She is of Guyanese descent[3] and her name derives from her family's place of origin in the Essequibo Islands-West Demerara region of Guyana, McDoom village.
[2] She describes her surname as "a colonial mess-up," ascribed when the British mistakenly anglicized her father's family name.
She spent one year in London before moving to Cairo in July 2003 to cover Egypt and Sudan.
The agency had her establish the first Reuters bureau in Sudan since the news service vacated that country 15 years prior.