Shazdeh Omari joined the Newmark J-School as its interim executive director of development in July 2023. She previously served as director of development for Global Press and, prior to that, as the deputy director of development at the Committee to Protect Journalists, a press freedom organization where she spent more than a decade and the first few years as a news editor. She previously worked as an editor for Women Under Siege, a journalism project by the Women’s Media Center, where she recruited journalists to report on sexualized violence as a tool of war. She served as the copy chief at The Village Voice and worked as a copy editor at Travel + Leisure magazine.
Shazdeh got her master’s in English-TESOL and a dual bachelor’s in journalism and sociology at universities in Connecticut. In 2022, she was named to the Emerging Leaders Council by the Institute for Nonprofit News. She was born in Saudi Arabia and raised in Karachi, Pakistan, and now lives in New York City with her husband and young daughter, the loves of her life.