Seema Yasmin Emmy Award-Winning Journalist, Pulitzer Prize finalist, Medical Misinformation Expert, and Doctor

Dr. Seema Yasmin is an Emmy Award–winning journalist, Pulitzer Prize finalist, medical doctor, professor, and the author of five books and three forthcoming books. She is director of the Stanford Health Communication Initiative, clinical assistant professor in Stanford University’s Department of Medicine, and visiting professor at the Anderson School of Management at UCLA where she teaches crisis management and communications. Her work focuses on the spread of health misinformation and disinformation and solutions to stop the viral spread of lies.

After training in medicine at the University of Cambridge, Yasmin served as an officer in the Epidemic Intelligence Service at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), where she investigated outbreaks of Ebola, Zika, and other infectious diseases around the world. She is a medical analyst for CNN and her writing appears in The New York Times, Rolling Stone, WIRED, Scientific American and other outlets, where she reports on health and science issues and the intersection of race, gender, and health.

Her most recent book, What the Fact? Finding the Truth in All the Noise, tackles one of the most important issues that today’s society faces, misinformation and the overexposure to news and data. Dr. Yasmin explores the crucial need for media literacy and fact-based reporting, and provides us with the necessary skills to discern truth from lies. Her forthcoming books include The ABCs of Queer History, a gorgeous picture book celebrating queer icons and milestones throughout history; Unbecoming, a debut novel about two Texas teens navigating friendship, faith and family in a post-Roe world; and Djinnology, An Illuminated Compendium of Spirits and Stories from the Muslim World, a collection of spooky tales.

A sought-after speaker who has delivered talks at the Vatican, White House, Aspen Ideas Festival, Skoll World Forum, the World Health Organization, Fortune 100 companies among others, Yasmin’s dynamic and engaging speaking style, combined with her unique blend of medical and journalistic expertise, makes her a captivating and thought-provoking presenter.

Yasmin is also a fiction fellow of the Kundiman and Tin House writing workshops. Her poems and short stories have been published in literary magazines and anthologies including The BreakBeat Poets Vol 3: Halal If You Hear Me, New Moons: Contemporary Writing by North American Muslims, The Georgia Review, The Literary Review, Foundry, The Los Angeles Review, The Asian American Writer’s Workshop, Apogee and others. Her writing has earned awards and residencies from the Millay Colony for the Arts, the Mid Atlantic Arts Council, Hedgebrook, and others.