Indira Lakshmanan

Indira A.R. Lakshmanan is a journalist with a career spanning more than three decades across print, digital, radio, and television. She has worked as a reporter, columnist, news executive, and host for major U.S. newspapers, magazines, global wire services, and public radio and TV. Lakshmanan has reported from more than 80 countries on six continents, covering international news, politics, and foreign policy for leading media outlets.

A National Merit Scholar and Radcliffe National Scholar at Harvard University, Lakshmanan graduated magna cum laude in the History of Art and Architecture. She also attended the University of Oxford as a Rotary Scholar, pursuing graduate studies in Latin American studies, and was later awarded a Nieman journalism fellowship at Harvard University.

Lakshmanan began her career on NPR's foreign desk before serving more than a decade as an international correspondent and bureau chief for The Boston Globe. During this period, she covered the Bosnian War, the fall of the Taliban in Afghanistan, and the drug war in Colombia. Her investigative reporting included examining ties between Abu Sayyaf militants and officials in the Philippines, tracking the spread of SARS in China, and embedding with sea pirates in the Philippines, Maoist rebels in Nepal, U.S. Special Forces in Afghanistan, and Khmer Rouge holdouts in Cambodia. She later joined Bloomberg News as a senior political correspondent, covering the presidential campaign and traveling with the campaigns of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John McCain, and Mitt Romney. From Washington, Lakshmanan reported on politics and foreign policy, traveling with Secretaries of State Hillary Clinton and John Kerry, and interviewing Clinton for radio and TV.

Transitioning to editorial leadership, Lakshmanan held influential roles at major American media institutions. As the inaugural Newmark Chair in journalism ethics at the Poynter Institute, she advanced thought leadership on restoring trust in journalism through transparency and accountability. She organized and hosted the first Poynter Ethics Summit, "The Press and The President: Trust and the Media in a New Era," which convened leading politics correspondents, anchors, and editors to address challenges such as disinformation and declining audience trust. Lakshmanan served as executive editor at the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, where projects she oversaw received a Pulitzer Prize and multiple National Magazine Awards, Emmys, Peabodys, and George Polk Awards. She later became Senior Executive Editor and Vice President for News & Features at National Geographic, and subsequently global enterprise editor at the Associated Press, leading a multiplatform special projects team.

Lakshmanan has held leadership roles at the Pulitzer Center, National Geographic, the Associated Press, and U.S. News & World Report, where she launched the Ideas & Opinions section, developing and overseeing content that provides perspective and insight on current issues. She has maintained a prominent broadcast presence, guest-hosting national NPR shows including "1A," "The Diane Rehm Show," "Here and Now," "On Point," and "Weekend Edition." Lakshmanan serves on the editorial standards committee for PBS and on the News Literacy Project's national journalism advisory board. Her career reflects a commitment to press freedom, media ethics, and the evolving responsibilities of journalism in a global context.