Reem Akkad is the senior producer for The Washington Post's award-winning original video team. Reem leads a team of ten video journalists and is responsible for collaborating with reporters across the newsroom. The team won the first prize for the World Press Photo's 2017 Digital Storytelling Contest in the category of innovative storytelling. Prior to joining The Washington Post, she was at Al Jazeera for eight years in multiple roles, most recently as the senior planning producer for the Emmy and Peabody award-winning current affairs program Fault Lines. In 2015, Reem was part of a team nominated for two Emmy Awards for investigative journalism and breaking news coverage. She began her career at ABC News and has degrees from The University of Texas at Austin and Columbia University. Reem was born in Damascus, Syria. She misses Damascus terribly but is so grateful to have immigrated to the U.S. at the age of nine. Since then she’s lived in New York, Arkansas, Texas, California and Washington. She now resides in Arlington with her two sons, Fareed and Kareem, and husband Samer.