Rawan Damen is the Director General of ARIJ (Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism). Rawan doubled the team and the budget of the ARIJ foundation she led in the past two years; and led the publication of 100+ investigations (in both Arabic and English languages), with tens of award-winning investigations during Covid19 time. She also led her 30+ team to be the largest Arab partner of FinCEN files and Pandora Papers cross-border investigations projects, led by ICIJ.
She is a media expert with more than 20 years of experience in TV and digital storytelling and did tens of award-winning TV documentaries and investigations in the Arab World translated to multiple languages, where she led tens of field teams (cameramen, sound engineer, video editors, producers,… etc.) in 20+ countries she filmed in, whom most of them were males. She was a senior commissioning editor at Al Jazeera for 10 years (2006 – 2016) and built and led a team of commissioners. She also led Palestine Remix team (over 40 content makers, developers, and designers) into the largest interactive platform to date in four languages on the story of Palestine.
She did her MA (with Distinction) in documentary filmmaking at Leeds University, UK, 2003. She received the Media Creativity Award by the Arab Thought Foundation in Beirut, 2015.