Who is ASE?

Ahmed Shihab-Eldin is an Arab-American journalist, social-media addict and works as a producer and host for the Huffington Post Streaming Network. In 2011, Ahmed created, produced and co-hosted Al Jazeera English’s groundbreaking social media show, “The Stream”, an award-winning interactive talk show that sources content from social networks, tapping into online communities to unearth underreported stories.

Before joining Al Jazeera English Ahmed worked as a reporter and producer for The Doha Film Institute, heading the online editorial efforts in the inaugural Doha Tribeca Film Festival where he interviewed the likes of Martin Scorcese, Robert De Niro and Queen Noor of Jordan. Ahmed has also worked as a multimedia producer at PBS’s award-winning documentary series Wide Angle, and a news producer for The New York Times foreign desk. His freelance work has taken him across the United States and the Arab World, including New York, Detroit, Lebanon, the UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, Egypt and Jordan among other locations.

Soon after graduating from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, Ahmed started teaching digital media as an adjunct professor, advising master’s projects and serving as a consultant on News21, a collaboration of 12 journalism schools under the Carnegie-Knight initiative on the Future of Journalism Education.  

Since the Arab uprisings began in 2011, Ahmed has been invited to speak about the democratization of both the media and the Arab world at international events across the globe, including the Google’s Zeitgeist 2011 conference. He will also be speaking at Google Zeitgeist Europe in 2012.

In 2008, his master’s project earned him a Webby Award for “Defining Middle Ground: The Next Generation of Muslim New Yorkers.”

Ahmed was born in California, and spent most of his formative years in Kuwait, Austria and Egypt, where he lived for nearly a decade. His parents were both born in Palestine and have since fled. His father left in 1948 following Israel’s self-declared independence. His mother left in 1967 as a result of the Six-Day War.

His older sister might disagree, but Ahmed makes it a point not to take himself or life too seriously.