Tairah Firdous is a communication expert, film maker and humanitarian worker. She is currently working as a media and gender advisor for Internews Network in Afghanistan for a media project called Rasana. Rasana trains female journalists in Afghanistan and supports women led media outlets in order to produce media content on women’s issues. The project also works on journalist safety issues and supports investigative journalism initiatives in Afghanistan.

Tairah has worked with Oxfam and Mercy Corps in emergencies and conflicts. She has reported extensively from conflicts in India and worked closely with IDPs. She has also covered humanitarian emergencies and the aftermath, especially in the devastating Kashmir Floods of 2014 , as well as 2015 Nepal Earth Quake.

In 2016, she moved to Kabul to take a Research Manager position at the Afghanistan Public Policy Research Organization. Tairah has an undergraduate degree in journalism from the University of Kashmir. In 2006, She received a Ford Foundation Fellowship to pursue higher studies in the United States and completed her Master’s in Journalism at Hawaii Pacific University, with a specialization in documentary filmmaking.

Tairah is working on her first novel, mostly influenced by her own experiences of growing up in a conflict and working in other war zones.

Participant in: August 2019 Fellowship: The Arts as a Tool for Peacebuilding