Courtesy Rami al Badry
Nastasya’s work is about finding points of reference; a shared humanity.
Currently a senior news anchor and correspondent at Al Jazeera English, based at AJE’s headquarters in Doha, Nastasya has reported from more than twenty-five countries across four continents.
She was formerly a Senior Correspondent at SBS World News in Sydney, Australia; and before that, she spent nearly a decade in Sub-Saharan Africa, telling stories from the region and beyond. Much of her work has focused on people: how societies grapple with conflict, inequality, poverty and environmental destruction.
Nastasya’s work spans formats and genres, from shooting news television reports and feature stills, to radio documentaries and food criticism.
Journalism
She has produced long-form investigative documentary projects for NBC’s Dateline and BBC, and was a regular correspondent for NPR, ITV, Australia’s Nine Network and Network 10, RTE, Public Radio International, and eNews Channel Africa.
Her work at Eyewitness News - the news arm of South Africa’s largest commercial radio broadcaster - was nominated for the country’s most highly regarded long-form radio documentary award in 2011.
Nastasya also spent five years producing, writing, and shooting for the Associated Press across Southern Africa; when Nelson Mandela passed, she jointly led the television coverage of his hospitalisation and death.
Her work in print and photo has appeared in publications including The Guardian and The Observer, The Independent, The Sydney Morning Herald & The Age, global news websites including The Economist and The Washington Post, and every major South African newspaper. She was a roving correspondent for Africa’s leading paper, the Mail & Guardian.
Other work
Nastasya’s writing on design, travel, food and culture has appeared in various places, including Roads & Kingdoms, Marie Claire, Elle Decoration, British Airways' High Life, VISI, Taste and South Africa’s Sunday Times.
Her column Sharptongue, was a critical reflection on life and food, for Africa’s largest financial broadsheet, Business Day.
She is also the co-founder of - and contributor to - the creative collaborative platform the extra-ordinary.
Nastasya is a former fellow of the International Women’s Media Foundation, and a former Board member of the Foreign Correspondents' Association of Southern Africa.
The backstory
Born in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and raised between Southeast Asia and Western Australia, Nastasya read Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE) at the University of Oxford and Politics, and Southeast Asian Studies at the School of Oriental & African Studies (SOAS) in London, graduating with First Class Honours.
She began her career in international development and policy, including postings with the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in Tanzania, and in Aceh, Indonesia, assessing the aid rollout in the aftermath of the 2004 tsunami.
For nearly eight years, Nastasya worked for various think tanks and non-governmental organisations, from Human Rights Watch to the UK’s Royal African Society; in roles from lobbying British Parliament in Westminster, to designing advocacy strategies for an array of grassroots civil society campaigns.
In 2010, she left one of Africa’s leading public health organisations in Johannesburg’s inner-city, for journalism.
Since then, Nastasya has covered famine and political rebirth in Somalia, the illegal rhino horn trade in Vietnam, pro-democracy protests in Swaziland, cyclones in the South Pacific, corruption in South Africa’s political ranks and Zimbabwe’s migrant exodus.
She’s filmed the army gunning down protesters in Mozambique, waded through flooded refugee camps in South Sudan.
She traced the trail of the White Widow, in the aftermath of the 7/7 bombings, and was in the courtroom for every day of Oscar Pistorius’ trial.
She’s cooked with an Iraqi rapper in the Calais Jungle; made spaghetti amatriciana with an Italian chef in the earthquake ruins of his home, in the village that gave the pasta its name.
She’s explained the backroom dealings from all-night sessions at UN climate change talks in Cancun, Durban, Doha, and Paris; watched political upheaval in the Maldives, electoral revolutions in New Zealand and Malaysia, and been very ill embedded on Greenpeace’s Rainbow Warrior.
Nastasya has interviewed Congolese tailors, Cambodian opposition leaders, freed Malaysian political prisoners, Yazidi refugees, Prime Ministers and a Pope.
She has lived in London, Kuala Lumpur, Arusha, Nairobi, Johannesburg and Sydney, but has been based in Doha since October 2019.
Nastasya speaks some French, Indonesian and Malay, alongside her native tongue, English.
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