Kholoud Helmi

Kholoud Helmi is a gender and media expert and the co-founder and board member of Enab Baladi newspaper established in 2011. She believes that women are key in the development, peace-building and stability. Before fleeing Syria, she was an eyewitness to the shooting of peaceful demonstrators, arbitrary arrests and massacres that occurred in Darayya and surrounding towns committed by Assad’s regime. She was the 2015 winner of the Anna Politkovskaya Award for reporting about the Syrian events, and the 2017 winner of the International Association’s Courage Under Fire Award for the documentary Cries From Syria. In 2016, Marie Claire magazine called her ‘the bravest woman in the world’. Kholoud holds an MA in media and development from SOAS, university of London, and is a Chevening scholar.