Name: Diba Mohtasham

Recipient Year: 2024

Description: Diba Mohtasham is an Iranian-American journalist, hailing from Virginia.  Before her time as a culture reporter, she was an audio producer working at NPR on a variety of podcasts. Specifically, she has produced for shows such as Code Switch, TED Radio Hour, How I Built This, and It's Been A Minute; hosted for Life Kit; and helped pilot Where We Come From, an original audio and visual series centering stories of immigrant communities of color. She is passionate about intimate, immersive stories that upend our fixed beliefs about the world. Before her time in journalism, Diba ran communications at a women’s health non-profit. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Film & Media Studies from the College of William and Mary. She is currently a Master of Arts candidate at Columbia University’s School of Journalism. In her spare time, you can find Diba watching films, making ceramics, or cooking new recipes. She is based in New York.

School Name: Columbia Univeristy

Major: Journalism

Sponsor: Ghulam and Arifa Azad Family Scholarship