GIJC17 Voices is a series of short interviews with some of the top investigative journalists from around the world.
Syed Nazakat is an award-winning journalist, media entrepreneur, founder and editor-in-chief of DataLEADS, a data-driven Indian initiative aimed to create new platforms of data research and storytelling. DataLEADS conducts series of unique data boot camps in different parts of Asia and also runs India’s first data-driven website dedicated to healthcare reporting, called Health Analytics India. He is also founder and editor-in-chief of the Centre for Investigative Journalism, a non-profit organization he founded to promote the cause of watchdog journalism in India.
Nazakat leads DataLEADS in New Delhi, as well as overseeing its outreach across Asia with different partners including with Asia News Network (Thailand), a network of 23 leading Asian daily newspapers in 20 Asian countries, with a combined circulation of 14 million and a readership of more than 50 million.
He has received multiple awards and worked in senior positions at different media organizations and has over 17 years of experience as broadcast, print and online journalist. He has reported on wars, armed conflicts, human rights issues & security and developmental issues from more than 30 countries and has covered the war in Afghanistan, political turmoil in Nepal, developmental issues in Laos and Cambodia, unrest in Thailand, the conflict in India’s Kashmir region, the civil war in South Sudan, defense industry in Germany and Australia, unrest in Myanmar and political instability in Bangladesh. He was the first Indian journalist to report from an al-Qaeda rehabilitation camp in Saudi Arabia and in 2013 he was given unprecedented access by the US to the military detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba to report about prison abuse cases.
