Lara Setrakian

Lara Setrakian (born in United States) is an Armenian American journalist with a focus on the Middle East political economy based between the Middle East & New York City and founder of Syria Deeply, a single issue news website covering the civil war in Syria. As the Middle East correspondent for Bloomberg Television, she was instrumental in Bloomberg Television’s live on the ground coverage of the 2011 Egyptian Revolution. Following the toppling of Tunisia's president Ben Ali during what became known as the Arab Spring, Setrakian arrived in Egypt before the January 25th protest and was reporting live from Tahrir Square when Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak stepped down. While covering the rise of piracy off the horn of Africa, Lara was the first American to interview the new president of war-torn Somalia, Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed. She participated in TEDxYerevan in Armenia and discussed her career as a Middle East foreign correspondent and the five things she learned along the way. Lara continues to report for ABC News and is a freelance contributor to Bloomberg Television, splitting her time between New York and the Middle East. Lara Setrakian was named as one of Marie Claire's Top Women of 2012. She is married to Canadian attorney Henri Arslanian.
A graduate of Harvard University, she was named a 2012 Young Global Leader by World Economic Forum's YGL groupand is the third most followed Bloomberg personality on Twitter.

Hailing from New Jersey and New York City, Setrakian attended the Elisabeth Morrow School and Horace Mann School in Riverdale, New York. She graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College with a degree in Government. After Harvard, Setrakian worked as a business analyst with McKinsey & Company. Setrakian speaks Arabic, Armenian, French and Spanish, and has studied Persian and Portuguese.

Syria Deeply

She founded a single issue news website on the Syrian Conflict in December 2012 called Syria Deeply. It is a collaboration with Ushahidi, freelance correspondents in the Middle East and other collaborators. It synthesizes information on the Syria conflict into a single website with sub headings covering issues regarding the Syrian conflict. It has been compared to a next generation blog according to Gigaom.

ABC News

Setrakian has covered the Middle East extensively, filing from across the Arab world and Iran. Setrakian covered Iranian presidential election, 2009 digitally, cited by several key aggregation blogs during the aftermath. She covered Lebanon’s violent unrest in May 2008 and reported from Saudi Arabia during the oil price crisis that summer. She filed a report on a $3 billion collection of modern masterpieces in the basement of the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, and was the only network reporter with the US Navy’s counter-piracy Combined Task Force 151 when it caught its first band of suspected pirates in the Gulf of Aden. While on that assignment, Setrakian was the first American to interview the new president of war-torn Somalia, Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed.

Before moving to the Middle East, Setrakian was a reporter for ABC News in New York where her reporting appeared on ABC News shows “Good Morning America,” “World News”,"This Week" and “Nightline.” She covered high-profile trials and cases in the U.S., such as Duke Lacrosse Sex Scandal as well as exclusively interviewing the five Chinese men released from Guantanamo Bay detention camp in 2006.

ABC New's Mid East Memo

Billed by ABC News as "weekly analysis and top stories in the world's hottest region, from ABC’s Lara Setrakian," the blog covers background information on the Middle East region. Lara's use of multiple platforms: television, web, Twitter, and blogs was highlighted by Rachel Boehm.

Bloomberg Television

Beginning as a contributor to Bloomberg Television while working with ABC News, Lara officially joined Bloomberg in early 2011. She headlined Middle East coverage for Bloomberg during the Arab Spring, and covered its aftermath including the latest ramifications in Libya, Lebanon, Tunisia, Egypt, Syria and Bahrain. Notable coverage and interviews included Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati, and Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh.

Monocle

Contributing to Monocle Magazine and Monocle TV from the Middle East, she covers human interest stories for their global audience.

Foreign Policy

Lara is a contributor to Foreign Policy's blog: Mideast Channel with articles on Lebanon, the impact of media on the Arab Spring and the economics of the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.

She was interviewed regarding the impact of Al Jazeera on the Arab Spring by Foreign Policy's Parag Khanna.

Business Insider

She also contributes to Business Insider on Middle East business activities, political economy and global oil markets.

As an example of recent work, she covered Boeing's record deal with Emirates Airlines and Airbus' deals with several airlines at the Dubai Air Show.

In 2007, she received a fellowship from the Peter Jennings Project for Journalists and the Constitution part of the National Constitution Center. Lara was named one of the top 9 most influential Young Professionals in Foreign Policy under 33 by The Diplomatic Courierand made Foreign Policy's FP Twitterati 100 'A Who's who of the foreign-policy Twitterverse in 2011'.

She is a member of the International Institute for Strategic Studies and the International Academy of Television Arts & Sciences.