Joud Hasan joined CPJ in January 2026 as the Levant Program Coordinator. He has worked at the intersection of journalism, research, and program management for nearly two decades. His reporting and editorial work has focused on civic movements, displacement, and state violence, covering key developments in Syria since 2011, and later in Iraq and Lebanon….
Geralda Embaló is CPJ’s Lusaphone Africa researcher and director of the Angolan newspapers Valor Económico and Nova Gazeta. She is also on the board of Radio Essencial, where her weekly column airs. She co-founded Angola’s first economics-focused newspaper and previously hosted an economics program on Channel 2 of public television. She holds a master’s degree in institutional communication…
Scott Mayemba Bila researches, monitors, and documents attacks on press freedom in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Mayemba joined CPJ in 2022. Before that, he was the principal researcher at Journalist in Danger (JED), which advocates for press freedom in the DRC. A trained journalist, Mayemba also worked as a correspondent for the Reporters…
Cristina Zahar joined CPJ in 2023. An experienced journalist and manager, she previously served as the executive director of the Brazilian Association of Investigative Journalism (Abraji) from 2018 to 2023. Zahar began her career at Brazil’s Folha de S.Paulo newspaper and her other roles include editorial director of Abril Coleções and CEO in Brazil of…
Yael Krifcher has been CPJ’s Levant Advocacy Associate since September 2025, where she documents rights violations, and develops and coordinates advocacy initiatives, in service of press freedom and crimes accountability in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory (IOPT). Her previous roles included working with UN agencies and civil society organizations in Palestine and in Washington,…
Sara Qudah is the Middle East and North Africa Regional Director for the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). A journalist and media development expert, she joined CPJ in 2025 from Internews, where she was the MENA program manager. Qudah began her career as a journalist in Jordan, working for various media outlets across the region…
Joan Chirwa is CPJ’s southern Africa researcher and founder of Free Press Initiative, a Zambian nonprofit media organization. Previously, she held senior positions at two Zambian newspapers, as managing editor of The Post and editor-in-chief of The Mast. Chirwa holds a master’s degree in mass communication from Britain’s Leicester University, a diploma in journalism from Evelyn…