Prior to attending the Columbia University School of Journalism’s Toni Stabile Center for Investigative Reporting, Lila Hassan was the senior Middle East/North Africa associate at Human Rights Watch, where she conducted background research and fact-checking for human rights abuses in the region and provided production assistance for all products. Previously, Hassan had also conducted in-depth research on abuses in Egypt as MENA intern at Human Rights Watch, as well as provide strategic planning and communications support as both a communications intern and assistant. A published reporter, her previous employment includes Thomson Reuters (Cairo), the International Rescue Committee (NYC), The Daily Sabah (Istanbul), Reporters Without Borders, RSF (Paris), among others. Lila is a recipient of the Jeannette K. Watson Fellowship and an alumna of the Scholars Program at Brooklyn College (political science, ’16), where she served as the campus newspaper’s Opinions Editor for two years. Her undergraduate thesis focused on Egypt’s press freedom environment throughout the regimes following the 2011 revolution. She is excited to develop her research and in-depth reporting skills at Columbia Journalism School, where she plans to study investigative techniques and aims to a pursue an international career conducting investigations in the Middle East. Fluent in Arabic and French, Lila’s passion for this work began in her hometown, Cairo, as a teenager in Tahrir Square during the 2011 protests.