About the Author

Maria Ebrahimji is the Director and Executive Editorial Producer for Network Booking at CNN Worldwide. In this position, she oversees the on-air guest booking process across all CNN platforms and leads a core team of editorial producers in guest coverage, newsgathering, and story planning for CNN’s special events, breaking news, and multi-platform programming. In her fifteen years at CNN, Ebrahimji has helped produce or managed CNN’s guest programming on many important stories and events, including four Presidential elections, 9/11, the Iraq War, Madrid train bombing, Pakistan and Haiti earthquakes, the 2011 Arab uprisings, and the deaths of Yasser Arafat, Ronald Reagan, Gerald Ford, and Benazir Bhutto, and Pope John Paul II. As a former producer for CNN International, Ebrahimji worked on high-profile programs such as Your World Today, Q&A, Diplomatic License, and Inside Africa. She began her career in interview producing with CNN U.S. weekend programming, eventually leading a small team that booked, researched and produced guest segments on current and feature domestic news stories.

At CNN and Turner Broadcasting, Ebrahimji is Vice Chair of the CNN Diversity Council, a board member of Turner Asia, a member of Turner Women Today, and is a member of the company’s Sustainability Council. She was recently part of an executive committee that helped launch and execute CNN Dialogues, a three-year partnership between CNN, the National Center for Civil & Human Rights, and Emory University’s Johnson Institute for the Study of Race & Difference.

In 2011, Ebrahimji co-edited and published I Speak for Myself: American Women on Being Muslim (White Cloud Press), a collection of essays written by 40 American-born Muslim women under 40. Since then, she co-founded I Speak for Myself, Inc., a book and multimedia enterprise that focuses on publishing self-narrative collections on interfaith and intercultural issues.

Ebrahimji holds a B.A. degree in Mass Communications from Brenau Women’s College and a Master’s of Arts degree in International Affairs from Georgia State University.