Rudabeh Shahbazi is thrilled to be back in the Pacific Northwest telling stories from her home state of Oregon!

Rudabeh comes to the Tri-Cities from the San Francisco Bay Area, where she worked on the assignment desk at KTVU Channel 2 News and as an assistant  for media attorney and First Amendment expert Thomas Burke. 

Rudabeh earned her Master's degree in television production from UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism. During her time there, she covered Hmong refugees in Thailand and Laos and won an Emmy for a newscast she produced. Frontline World picked up her Master's thesis, a story she produced and reported on the Jordan-Iraq border, about Iraqi refugees who fled violence in their homeland.

Prior to graduate school, Rudabeh was the assistant to the director and producer of the award-winning film “King Leopold's Ghost,” a documentary about the history of colonial exploitation in the Congo.  Before that, she reported for the Malibu Surfside News and translated breaking news from Iran as a writer and assistant editor of IranDokht, a website focused on Iranian women's issues.  

She holds a B.A. in journalism from Pepperdine University, where she minored in sociology and won numerous awards as an editor of her college newspaper, The Graphic. She also studied tropical ecology in the rain forests Costa Rica and art history in London.

Rudabeh has held competitive internships at National Geographic Feature Films and Promises Films.  She is currently a fellow with the Peter Jennings Project for Journalists and the Constitution.

Rudabeh's passion for documenting history in the making stems from her late father, a world-renown archaeologist, writer and historian, and her biggest inspiration.

In her free time Rudabeh loves to travel, and spends every summer with her family in Iran.  She has also studied Middle Eastern and Polynesian dance for 20 years. 

Rudabeh is a volunteer with the American Cancer Society.  She speaks Farsi and conversational Spanish.

She would love to hear your story ideas! You can email her at rudabeh@keprtv.com.