Arwa
Damon

Inspired by the September 11 attacks, Damon abandoned a career in textiles and moved to Baghdad ahead of the Iraq War. She joined CameraPlanet as a media supplier before embedding with CNN's Baghdad bureau as a freelancer in 2004.

Damon covered all three Iraqi elections — January 2005, October's constitutional referendum, and December 2005 — as well as the historic trials and executions of Saddam Hussein and his senior officials in January 2007. She joined CNN as a full correspondent in 2006.

As part of the CNN team that won a 2012 Emmy Award for outstanding coverage of the Egyptian Revolution, Damon documented the pivotal fall of President Mubarak. Following the 2012 Benghazi attack, she was among the first journalists on the scene and recovered the personal diary of slain Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens.

Damon embedded with anti-poaching rangers in the Congo's Odzala National Park for her investigation Ivory War, then travelled to West Africa following the Chibok schoolgirls kidnapping. She covered the Syrian civil war extensively, including multiple reporting trips into refugee camps.

In one of her most harrowing assignments, Damon was embedded with Iraqi forces during the Battle of Mosul. Her convoy came under sustained IS fire, leaving her trapped for 28 hours in intense fighting before Iraqi reinforcements broke through to rescue them.

Damon accompanied Greenpeace expeditions to Antarctica and the Arctic, reporting on catastrophic ice loss and the global climate crisis. She also reported from Nepal on the surge in fatalities among Everest climbers and helped keep the Thai cave rescue in the global spotlight.

After departing CNN in June 2022, Damon focused entirely on INARA. She has entered the Gaza Strip four times to lead charity work during the ongoing conflict, continuing to place herself at the center of the world's most urgent humanitarian crises.