Rudabeh Shahbazi joined the ABC15 news team as a multimedia journalist in March 2009.
She comes to the Valley from eastern Washington, where she was an education reporter for KEPR/KIMA-TV.
While there, she interviewed then presidential candidate Barack Obama, reported from the top of a wind turbine 250 feet in the air and broke the story of an illegal pet turtle ring, which alerted hundreds of families about the salmonella in their homes.
Rudabeh traveled to the Jordan-Iraq border for her Master’s thesis at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism to spend time with Iraqi refugees.
That report appeared on Frontline World’s website and resulted in the asylum of a civilian who was injurred and lost her entire family in an American bombing raid.
At Berkeley, she also covered the Iranian nuclear crisis and trekked through villages in Laos and Thailand to shoot video of the Vietnam War’s Hmong refugees.
Prior to her time in the Pacific Northwest, Rudabeh helped gather breaking news in the KTVU newsroom in the San Francisco Bay Area.
She also spent a year digging up archives of atrocities in the Congo while it was under Belgian rule for the documentary “King Leopold’s Ghost,” which took first place at the Santa Barbara, Bermuda and Mumbai film festivals.
Her career in journalism began at Pepperdine University, where she also studied sociology and spent semesters in Costa Rica and London. While still in college, she reported for the Malibu Surfside News and served as an award-winning editor of her college newspaper, The Graphic.
Rudabeh speaks Farsi and conversational Spanish. She is a fellow at the Peter Jennings Center for Journalism and the Constitution.
When she’s not reporting, shooting or editing, you can find Rudabeh at a dance class, watching documentaries or traveling.
Rudabeh believes the best stories come from viewers and web users, and is always looking for new ideas. You can contact her at
RShahbazi@abc15.com.
