I'm a journalist, host, and senior producer at AJ+:

My job today involves, pitching, researching, scripting, fact-checking, producing, and (gasp) hosting short documentaries for "Eat This with Yara,” an award-winning AJ+ show I launched in 2018 that explores the intersection of food with society, politics, and the environment.

Since we launched “Eat This with Yara” – formerly branded as “In Real Life” – the show has amassed tens of millions of views across YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, and has won awards from a variety of bodies such as the national Daytime Emmys, the James Beard Foundation, the Webby Awards, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the Shorty Awards, and more.

Before launching Eat This with Yara:

I worked on AJ+’s news team, where I produced and edited hundreds of shortform news videos that generated hundreds of millions of views and millions of shares/retweets across Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. My work generated meaningful discussions among AJ+'s worldwide audience and helped grow the company's Facebook presence from five million followers to more than 11 million (back when Facebook had main-character energy).

During my time as a news video producer, I also hosted and produced in-depth studio explainers, made experimental self-hosted short documentaries, worked remotely with video journalists in the field to produce evergreen features, and devised social engagement and audience development strategies for video launches. Near the end of my time in this position, I hosted and co-produced a four-part short documentary series on Iranian Americans and their immigration history.

Before working at AJ+:

I moved to Iran in 2013 to work as a freelance journalist for a couple months...but ended up staying for two years.

While there, I freelanced articles for outlets like The Guardian's Tehran Bureau, took photos for Humans of Tehran (a Facebook page modeled after HONY), performed simultaneous translations from Persian-to-English (and English-to-Persian) at a TEDx event, and served as a marketing/PR expert for an Iranian animation studio.

Before moving to Iran:

I was a student at NYU who got to do some cool internships at places like Al Jazeera English, New York 1 News, Yahoo! and – before all that – at the online video game publication I'd worshipped since I was a kid, 1UP.com.