Maryam Ishani Thompson

Maryam Ishani is a 15 year veteran of war, peace and reconciliation journalism for some of the largest news organizations in the world, including The Guardian, BBC and Agence France-Presse. Her video reporting has been seen on CNN, BBC, and France24.

A (masters) graduate of Columbia University, she began her career in International Affairs at the United Nations Headquarters in New York working directly on peace-building agendas and at the Security Council as a Monitor and Reporter for the Watchlist on Children and Armed Conflict. In 2009, Maryam left the UN to work as a journalist covering issues of war, peace, and reconciliation in the South West Asia North Africa and Asia Pacific regions. You can see her coverage of the Arab Spring in Foreign Policy Magazine, her coverage of the US invasion of Iraq for Reuters, and her coverage of the rise of Al Qaeda in Yemen for the Guardian.

As a staff journalist for Agence France-Presse you can see her reports on the democracy movement in Hong Kong and her coverage of global diplomacy with Iran, among other top news coverage. She was part of the team that drafted the first Freedom of Information Act for the first Tunisian Constitution, which became the benchmark for other post Arab Spring constitutions. She has also served as Country Director for the Institute for War and Peace Reporting where she worked to raise the conflict reporting capacity of news teams working in Iraq, Syria and Yemen. In 2017, Maryam directed her first feature length documentary “Changing the World One Wall at a Time” telling the story of the largest global street art campaign supporting the freedom for education and the right to learn in Iran.

Today, Maryam provides trainings for media teams working in complex assignments on best practices and is also the Co-Founder and Chief Content Officer of systemCHANGR where she works to advance unique analysis and editorial content for it’s community and ESG think tank.

Sub-specialties:
I am a specialist on the way war impacts civilians, on radicalisation and on the role that climate change is creating new conflicts in places like Yemen, Egypt, Iraq, the Sahel region and in the Asia Pacific.

I am also an education specialist with a focus on working with children affected by war and on reintegrating child combatants.