Arwa Damon

Arwa Damon (born September 19, 1977) is an Arab-American, CNN Senior International Correspondent, based in Beirut. From 2003, she covered the Middle East as a freelance journalist, before joining CNN in 2006.

Early life

Born in Boston, Damon spent her early childhood years in Wayland, Massachusetts. Her father, Dr. George H. Damon, Jr, is an American and her mother, Joumana, is Syrian and grew up in Damascus.^[1] Damon is the granddaughter of Muhsin al-Barazi, the former Syrian Kurd prime minister of Syria, who was executed in the 1949 military coup.^[2]

At age six, Damon and her family moved to Morocco, followed by Istanbul, Turkey three years later, where her father was a teacher and middle school director at Robert College. He went from there to Isıkkent School in Izmir, and was then headmaster of the American Community School at Beirut from 2003 until his retirement in 2013.^[3]

Damon skipped sixth grade and graduated with honors from Robert College at the age of sixteen. She then spent a gap year with her aunt and uncle in Morocco, learning show jumping, before moving to the U.S. to attend Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York.^[2][4] She graduated with honors in 1999 with a double major in French and biology and a minor in international affairs. She is fluent in Arabic, French, Turkish, and English, having grown up speaking all four languages.

Before becoming a reporter, Damon worked for a high-end New York–based Turkish textile company.

Career

Damon decided to become a journalist after 9/11, moving to Baghdad prior to the beginning of the Iraq War.^[2][5] She began her career at CameraPlanet, working to get correspondent Peter Arnett's team into pre-war Iraq. For three years, she covered the Middle East as a freelance producer working with CNN, PBS, Fox News and others, before joining CNN in February 2006.

Damon has covered many military and civil events during the invasion and occupation of Iraq. These include the United States Army's Battle of Najaf against the Mehdi Army and the battle to retake Samarra in 2004. She has also reported on the United States Marine Corps' offensive against insurgents in Fallujah and Operation Steel Curtain in Husaybah near the Syrian border.

Civil events Damon has covered include the Iraqi elections of January 2005, the constitutional referendum vote in October 2005, and the Iraqi election of December 2005. She also reported on the trial and executions of Saddam Hussein, Barzan Ibrahim Hassan al-Tikriti and Awad Hamed al-Bandar in January 2007.

Starting in December 2010, Damon covered the Arab Spring from Libya and Egypt. After the 2012 Benghazi attack, she was one of the early journalists to arrive at the scene and recovered slain Ambassador J. Christopher's personal diary.^[2]

Awards

Damon won an Investigative Reporters and Editors' IRE Award for her reporting of the Consulate attack in Benghazi, along with fellow photojournalist Sarmad Qaseera.^[6][7]

Damon was part of the CNN team who won the 2012 Emmy Award for Outstanding Live Coverage of a Current News Story - Long Form (Revolution in Egypt: President Mubarak Steps Down).^[8][9] In 2014, she was awarded the Courage in Journalism Award given by the International Women's Media Foundation (IWMF).^[10]

References

External links