- Trip: Fellows Spring 2004
- Affiliation during program: Freelance Video
- Country: Solomon Islands
- Year: 2004
Kira Kay is co-founder, along with fellow IRP alumnus Jason Maloney, of the Bureau for International Reporting (BIR) – a non-profit organization dedicated to producing and providing vital international television news programming to an American audience. She and Maloney shared the 2008 Robert F. Kennedy Award in International Journalism for their reporting on the war in Northern Uganda. Also for the BIR, Kira has reported from countries as varied as Liberia, Ukraine, East Timor, Bosnia, Lebanon and Rwanda. She has also covered UN peacekeeping in Congo for NOW on PBS and US military actions in Africa for Dan Rather Reports, explored the economic impact of a rising global middle class for NOW on PBS, reported on the plight of Iraqi refugees in Jordan for PBS Wide Angle and served as correspondent for a PBS NewsHour story on the start of the Khmer Rouge tribunals in Cambodia. In 2005, Kay consulted for the New York Times on their official submission to the PBS America at a Crossroads series, “Indonesia: Struggle for the Soul of Islam.” In 2004 she covered the Darfur crisis for CBS 60 Minutes, receiving an Emmy nomination for her efforts. As an IRP Fellow in early 2004, she spent six weeks in the Solomon Islands, filming the Australian-led intervention in this tiny island nation — part of the larger global war on terror. In 2003 she completed her master’s degree in foreign policy at the Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton University. As part of a consultancy team sponsored by the United Nations, she traveled to Sierra Leone to research security threats and post-conflict reconstruction. As a Fulbright scholar in Southeast Asia from 2001-2002, Kay covered the region for various American news outlets and was one of only a handful of American journalists allowed access to the war-torn province of Aceh, Indonesia. From 1992 to 2001 Kay worked for ABC News, producing for the magazine shows Primetime Live and 20/20. Assignments included an hour-long documentary on death row in Angola, Louisiana; a personal history of a small Ukrainian village and its residents during the holocaust; an investigation into the early release policy of the Los Angeles jails system; and the story of an Amish community changed by the arrival of its first black resident. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and is a fellow of the US-Japan Foundation Leadership Program.