Arwa Damon is an award winning internationally acclaimed journalist known for covering some of the most pivotal political and humanitarian crisis in the Middle East and beyond. Her focus has always been on the human story in the midst of war and chaos. She spent 17 years at CNN as a senior international correspondent before parting ways with the network to work on an independent documentary. Arwa has reported from the frontlines in Iraq , the Arab Spring, the fighting in Syria, and the war on ISIS. She was the first western journalist to report from the ground on the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi. In 2016 she and cameraman Brice Laine were embedded with Iraqi special forces as they pushed into Mosul and ended up ambushed by ISIS and besieged for 28 hours. Arwa has won numerous awards for her work including the Investigative Reporters and Editors IRE Awards, an Emmy Award for Outstanding Live Coverage, the Courage in Journalism Award by the International Women’s Media Foundation. In 2015 Arwa founded INARA, a charity which provides crucial medical treatment to children suffering from war related injuries who are unable to access medical care. INARA currently operates in Turkey, Lebanon, and Ukraine. Arwa is Syrian-American and speaks English, Arabic, Turkish, and French. She graduated from Skidmore college with honors with double major in Biology and French.