Lila Hassan is an award-winning independent investigative journalist who focuses on extremism, human rights, and immigration. After five years working in human rights investigations and documentation, she pivoted to journalism and has reported from Cairo, Istanbul, Paris, and New York. 

A multimedia reporter and researcher, Hassan has contributed to investigative and enterprise documentaries and podcasts that have gone on to win Polk Awards, become a DuPont finalist, and be nominated for a Peabody Award. Hassan also contributed two stories to a package of work in The New York Times on U.S. airstrikes in Iraq and Syria that won the Pulitzer Prize in International Reporting (2022). 

In June 2024, Hassan co-won the prestigious Livingston Award for national reporting, honoring work she had done on season 4 of Bodies, a podcast exploring medical mysteries using a human-first storytelling approach.

Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Wired, The Nation, Mother Jones, The Intercept, FRONTLINE PBS, Reuters, The Guardian, ProPublica, HuffPost National, Kaiser Health News, and more. She has covered issues ranging from protest crackdowns in Istanbul, countries’ inaction to repatriate citizens who joined ISIS from camps in Syria and Iraq, as well as ghost guns and online far-right extremism radicalization.  

She has served on the jury for the James Foley Conflict Reporting Award (2021, 2022) and regularly engages in discussion about the importance of growing diversity within journalism (see panels). 

Hassan is also an adjunct teaching local reporting at Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, where she was also previously an associate of Columbia Graduate School of Journalism’s Simon and June Li Center for Global Journalism, where she served as a course aide to the school’s conflict reporting course.

Hassan was recently the acting research editor at Insider's investigation desk, where she oversees the fact-checking operation and general editorial standards related to research. She also serves on the fundraising and event planning committees of the Arab and Middle Eastern Journalist Association. 

She holds an M.S. from Columbia Journalism School’s specialized Toni Stabile investigative program, where she was a Lorana Sullivan fellow. She holds a B.A. in political science with honors from CUNY Brooklyn College, where she was a Scholars Program student. She has also studied international affairs and law at Université de Paris X - Nanterre. 

Hassan speaks Arabic (bilingual) and French (professional fluency), and is working on her Spanish. Language learning recommendations are welcome.