Shaya Tayefe Mohajer, Bureau Chief, Cronkite News - Los Angeles

As the bureau chief for Cronkite News - Los Angeles, Shaya Tayefe Mohajer guides students during the production of daily digital and broadcast content relevant to Southern California and Arizona State University.

Tayefe Mohajer joined the Cronkite School in 2019 after teaching at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism and overseeing writing for the school’s student-led publication, Annenberg Media.

Prior to her most recent roles in higher education, she spent more than a decade writing national news, much of that time as a reporter for The Associated Press. As an Iranian American who is fluent in Farsi, she contributed to coverage of Iran throughout her career at AP, including a stint in Cairo during the 2009 Green Revolution.

Prior to the AP, her career began in network news, working for the NBC-TV “Today” show in New York City. She also worked in news leadership at Participant Media, developing innovative digital content dealing with social justice and global human rights issues. She writes on newsroom diversity and fairness in coverage for The Columbia Journalism Review, and her long-form work has been published in Curbed and The Intercept.

She holds bachelor's degrees in political science and English from the University of California, Irvine. She earned a master's degree in journalism from New York University.