Yasmeen Altaji

I’m a journalist reporting on politics, policy, art and culture in the US and internationally. I’ve hosted and produced award-winning podcasts, reported on historic protests, and investigated social justice issues across my audio and text reportage. My work has appeared in international outlets and on programs including the BBC, the CBC, Al Jazeera English, CNN, and The World. 

In 2024 and 2025, I was based in the UAE, where I produced four podcasts for The National News, an international English-language publication headquartered in Abu Dhabi. The daily news podcast I hosted, produced and relaunched, Trending Middle East, won its first-ever recognition — a Signal Award — in my tenure. As a reporter, I covered the response from Syria’s Christians in the immediate aftermath of the HTS-led ouster of the Assad regime, the killing of a Palestinian American near his family home in the West Bank, and the 12-day Iran-Israel war. 

I’m the founder and former editor of The Word, an award-winning independent news source serving the Assyrian community, a distinct ethnic group native to parts of modern-day Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Syria. During The Word’s five-year run, I oversaw production of fact-based, timely reportage focused on issues impacting Assyrians in Iraq, the United States, the EU, Syria, Turkey and more. The Word was recognized with multiple community and industry awards, including the Society of Professional Journalists’ Mark of Excellence honor.

I earned my MA in Journalism with a Politics concentration at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism as a Gordon and Maggie Gray International Reporting Fellow. There, my reported thesis won the Morton Mintz Fellowship Award for social justice reporting, among the highest honors for students in the MA program. I graduated from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications and Bienen School of Music, with a B.S. in Journalism and a B.Mus in Voice and Opera with Honors, respectively.