Faisal Karimi

Faisal Karimi is a media entrepreneur, media educator, and senior journalist from Afghanistan. He is the founder and director of the Afghanistan Institute for Research and Media Studies and the Afghanistan Women’s News Agency, an exiled multimedia news platform dedicated to covering women’s issues in Afghanistan. He is currently a John S. Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford University and was previously an Alfred Friendly Press Partners Fellow at the University of Missouri, Class of 2024.

In 2021, following the Taliban's takeover of Afghanistan and escalating threats to journalists, Karimi played a pivotal role in helping the female journalists and producers with their families from his news agency escape to the United States and Canada. Despite operating in exile, he continues to lead his organization, amplifying the voices of Afghan women and providing critical news and information to people in Afghanistan under Taliban.

Karimi has also worked as a media researcher at San Jose State University and Internews Europe and served as the Asia-Pacific Regional Coordinator for the Global Forum for Media Development (GFMD). Prior to the Taliban takeover, he was an assistant professor at the School of Journalism and Communication at his alma mater, Herat University, in western Afghanistan.

Faisal Karimi