Lisa Daftari is an award-winning investigative journalist, political analyst and commentator frequently appearing on Fox News, CBS, NBC, PBS, Al Jazeera, Voice of America and SiriusXM focusing on foreign policy topics such as the Middle East and North Africa, terrorism, national security, human rights, and cyber security.
Lisa also serves as director and founding editor of The Foreign Desk, a news platform covering stories and analysis from around the globe with an emphasis on their impact on U.S. foreign policy. She publishes a popular daily top-10 email briefing with the day’s most vital foreign affairs stories, reaching 250,000 monthly subscribers. Her exclusives appear on The Drudge Report, Fox News, The Telegraph, Newsweek, CNN, The Huffington Post and The Washington Post.
She is regularly called upon to give briefings and expert testimony to government and private entities and has worked for several think tanks in Washington, where she has written exclusive reports for the Pentagon and other government groups. Lisa speaks fluent Farsi, Spanish and English.
Lisa holds a master’s degree in broadcast journalism from the University of Southern California Annenberg School of Journalism and completed her undergraduate degree in Middle East studies, Spanish and vocal performance at Rutgers University. In 2006, Lisa was invited to show her documentary film about an Iranian underground political movement in Congress, calling for global attention on human rights abuses and regime change in Iran.
Lisa is an avid opera singer and pianist. In 2019, she did a popular TED Talk on fake news. Lisa has been named one of the 30 Hottest Women in Politics by the Washington Times. She grew up in a suburb of New York City and currently lives in Los Angeles with her husband and baby boy.
