Lara SetrakianDubai-Based Correspondent, ABC News & Bloomberg Television, USA
Lara Setrakian is a Dubai-based correspondent for ABC News and Bloomberg Television. An experienced international news reporter, Setrakian covers markets, government, finance, business and company news. Setrakian was instrumental in Bloomberg Television’s live on-the-ground coverage of the crisis in Egypt in January and February of 2011. Setrakian arrived in Egypt before the January 25th protest and was reporting live from Tahrir Square when Mubarak stepped down.
Setrakian has covered the Middle East extensively, filing from across the Arab world and Iran. Setrakian won acclaim for her digital reporting on Iran’s 2009 presidential election. She covered Lebanon’s violent unrest in May 2008 and reported from Saudi Arabia during the oil price crisis that summer. She filed an exclusive report on a $3 billion collection of modern masterpieces in the basement of Tehran’s Museum of Contemporary Art, and was the only network reporter with the US Navy’s counter-piracy task force when it caught its first band of suspected pirates in the Gulf of Aden. While on that assignment, Setrakian was the first American to interview the new president of war-torn Somalia, Sheikh Sherif Sheikh Ahmed.
Before moving to the Middle East, Setrakian was a reporter for ABC News in New York where her reporting appeared on ABC News’ “Good Morning America,” “World News” and “Nightline.” She covered high-profile trials and cases in the U.S., as well as exclusively interviewing the five Chinese men released from Guantanamo Bay in 2006.
Prior to joining ABC News, Setrakian worked as a business analyst with McKinsey & Company. She graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College with a degree in Government. In 2007, she received a fellowship from the Peter Jennings Project for Journalists and the Constitution. She is a member of the International Institute for Strategic Studies and the International Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. Setrakian speaks Arabic, Armenian, French and Spanish, and has studied Persian and Portuguese.
