Pakistani-Canadian journalist Habiba Nosheen is a successful woman of color representing other women of color in the United States.
She was born in Pakistan by her Arab parents in 1982, and spent the early years of her life in Lahore. Her family migrated to Canada when Habiba was nine years old. The family became refuges on their arrival in Canada, but things fell into place after they gained right to residency.
Growing up in Toronto, Canada Habiba obtained a bachelor’s degree from University of Toronto and master’s degree from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism as well as from York University, Toronto in Women’s Studies.
Habiba articulates four different languages fluently─ English, Urdu, Hindi and Punjabi. She started her career in journalism as a reporter at the CBC Radio Pakistan where she was later nominated to report for the prestigious Kroc Fellowship, on-air for NPR ‘s Morning Edition and All Things Considered.
In 2012, she started her PBS investigation, “To Adopt a Child,” which told the story of the murky side of adoptions from Nepal that left many families caught in the middle. The investigation won the Gracie Award for Outstanding Correspondent and led to a resolution in the Nepalese adoption system, after the government accepted faults for the first time that the whole system has a mistake.
In 2013, she successfully shot the film Outlawed in Pakistan, she was totally responsible for directing, reporting and narrating of the film which was aired on PBS Frontline. The film was won the Emmy for Outstanding Research and Nosheen’s third Overseas Press Club Award.
Outlawed in Pakistan also premiered at the Sundance Film Festival where it was called “among the standouts” of Sundance by The Los Angeles Times. The film also got her the David A. Andelman and Pamela Title Award by The Overseas Press Club which honors “the best international reporting in the broadcast media showing a concern for the human condition.”
Another outstanding piece that brought her many ground breaking awards was her work for This American Life, a radio documentary “What Happened at Dos Erres?”. The pieced put together a massacre in Guatemala that happened 30 years earlier partly by tracking down the men responsible for the killings and interviewing them about what happened that day.
The documentary was tagged “a masterpiece of storytelling” by New Yorker and it won her various awards including; The George Foster Peabody Award, The Dart Award for Excellence in Coverage of Trauma, The Third Coast Radio Award, The New York Radio Festival Award and two Overseas Press Club Awards in addition to being a finalist for The Livingston Award for Young Journalists.
In 2014, Habiba joined 60 Minutes and she was nominated for the Emmy Award and named a finalist for the George Foster Peabody Award.
Pakistan’s leading newspaper named Habiba Nosheen as one of the “top 5 Outstanding Pakistani Women” in 2014.
Her documentaries have received various supports from The Fund for Investigative Journalism, The Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, The Nation Institute’s Investigative Fund and ITVS.
Her reporting has also been published by The New York Times, TIME, The Washington Post, BBC and ProPublica among others outlets.
Two years ago she was announced by CBC as the new co-host of Canada’s leading investigative news-magazine show, “the fifth estate.” She has since been offering viewers deep and enticing stories, of ongoing events, on the fifth estate’s 42nd season premieres.
She also currently teaches journalism at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism.
Habiba is a happy mother of two lovely children.
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