Masih Alinejad

Profile Overview

Masoumeh "Masih" Alinejad-Ghomikolayi (Persian: معصومه علی‌نژاد قمی‌کُلایی; born September 11, 1976), is an Iranian-American journalist, author, and political activist. Alinejad worked as a presenter/producer at Voice of America Persian News Network, a correspondent for Radio Farda, a frequent contributor for Manoto television, and a contributing editor for IranWire. Alinejad focuses on criticism of the status of human rights in Iran, especially women's rights. Time magazine named her among its 2023 honorees for Women of the Year.
Alinejad lives in exile in New York City. She has won several awards, including the 2015 Geneva Summit for Human Rights and Democracy women's rights award, the Omid Journalism Award from the Mehdi Semsar Foundation, and a "Highly Commended" AIB Media Excellence Award. She released a memoir in 2018 titled The Wind in My Hair that deals with her experiences growing up in Iran, where she writes girls "are raised to keep their heads low, to be unobtrusive as possible, and to be meek".
According to U.S. prosecutors, she has been the target of a kidnapping plot and multiple assassination plots by the Iranian government. In 2019, Alinejad sued the Iranian government in a U.S. federal court for harassment against her and her family.