Indira Lakshmanan

Indira Lakshmanan is the Newmark chair in journalism ethics and a Boston Globe columnist. She has covered coups, campaigns and revolutions, reporting from the US and 80 countries for the Globe, Bloomberg, the International New York Times, NPR, PBS and Politico Magazine. She traveled for seven years with Secretaries of State Hillary Clinton and John Kerry, and interviewed Clinton more than a dozen times for radio and TV. Indira wrote a "Letter from Washington" column for the overseas edition of The New York Times and Bloomberg. She has guest-hosted national public radio shows including "1A," "The Diane Rehm Show," "Here and Now'," "Weekend Edition," and "The Takeaway," and is a frequent television contributor.

At Poynter, Indira is spurring thought leadership and new initiatives on restoring trust in media across the political spectrum through transparency and accountability. She commissioned the first Poynter Media Trust Survey, and has convened leading national political editors, journalists and media critics to discuss the importance of free, fair, nonpartisan media in truth-telling to hold officials accountable and sustain democracy.

Before reporting from Washington, Indira spent a dozen years as a foreign correspondent, covering the Bosnian War and the fall of the Taliban in Afghanistan and interviewing and profiling leaders including Benazir Bhutto, Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez. She has embedded with sea pirates in the Philippines, Maoist rebels in Nepal, and Khmer Rouge holdouts in Cambodia. Her reporting exposed child labor in Bolivia, illegal logging in Brazil, corruption in China, and helped end the incarceration of innocent children in Nepal.

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