Yalda Hakim
Correspondent, BBC
Yalda Hakim is well-known as the presenter of the BBC World News’s flagship program Impact. She has worked for the BBC presenting and reporting since 2012, delivering hitting journalism on many world issues.
In October 2013 Yalda and her team won a United Nations Association of Australia Media Award in the category of Best Television Documentary for two investigations in Yemen. Before joining BBC World News, Yalda was the presenter of SBS Dateline in Australia. From a headline-making investigation in Afghanistan’s Kandahar province to her reporting from Libya during the Arab Spring, Yalda has built up a wealth of journalistic experience around the world.
Yalda was born in Afghanistan and moved to Australia in the late 1980s after her father fled Kabul with his family when the Soviet Union invaded. She began her career as a cadet journalist at SBS’s World News Australia. Early on, she came to be a finalist for the Australian Young Journalist of the Year Award and she won the United Nations Media Peace Prize for Best Australian Television News coverage in 2009.
As well as English, Hakim speaks five other languages including Farsi, Urdu, Hindi, Pashto and Dari, and is currently learning Mandarin.