Name: Lila Hassan

Recipient Year: 2019

Major: Journalism

Description: 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. 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 further developed her research and in-depth reporting skills at Columbia Journalism School, graduating with a master's in Investigative Journalism in 2020.

School Name: Columbia University

Sponsor: Shahin-Fatemeh Scholarship|Afzal Family Foundation

LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lilahassan/