Davar Iran Ardalan
Senior Supervisory Producer, Weekend Morning Programming
Cartoonist Bill Griffith and his comic creation, Zippy, both are Davar Ardalan fans, as illustrated in this July 30, 2001 comic strip.
Davar Iran Ardalan is the Senior Supervisory Producer of Weekend Morning Programming. With over 17 years experience in public broadcasting, Ardalan is responsible for producing Weekend Edition Saturday with Scott Simon and Weekend Edition Sunday with Liane Hansen. The two newsmagazines have a combined listenership of seven million.
As a veteran NPR producer, Ardalan has produced hundreds of stories from profiles of Iran's Revolutionary Guard and Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, to actor and philanthropist Paul Newman to music features on legend Herbie Hancock and guitarmaker Paul Reed Smith, to a cooking segment with culinary wizard Alton Brown.
Ardalan is also the creative force behind Soapbox, the on-line blog component to Weekend Edition. Soapbox has allowed Weekend Edition listeners to peer behind the scenes, to get to know the show in a more informal way. The blog has also been a forum to enlist listener stories when planning a major series on race and politics or to suggest questions for Liane Hansen to pose to legendary singer Joan Baez.
Prior to coming to Weekend Edition, Ardalan worked as a Supervisory Producer on Morning Edition. Ardalan helped shape the daily newsmagazine, and was responsible for other decisions on the show that required elaborate coordination and planning — such as shaping Morning Edition broadcasts from Baghdad, Kabul and New Orleans.
Ardalan began as a temporary production assistant in July 1993 and a year later she moved to a full-time production assistant position at Weekend Edition Sunday. After spending nearly twelve years as a field producer, teaming with NPR hosts and correspondents to report on topics including girls in New York gangs, gambling in Atlantic City casinos, and Islam in cyberspace, Ardalan transitioned to Morning Edition in January 2005. In April 2002, Ardalan and NPR's Jacki Lyden received a Gracie award from the American Women in Radio and Television for the NPR documentary "Loss and Its Aftermath," the story of Israeli and Palestinian parents speaking about the deaths of their children in the conflict.
Her given name, Iran, inspired the 2004 NPR/American Radioworks series, "My Name is Iran." In the stories she explored the country for which she was named, tracing her Iranian heritage and her own experiences after the 1979 Islamic revolution. The struggle of a nation as reflected in her family's story led to a memoir, My Name is Iran published by Henry Holt in January 2007.
Ardalan's career in the American media began in 1991 at KOAT-TV in Albuquerque, N.M., A year later, she made the switch to radio as a reporter at KUNM-FM in Albuquerque. She produced award-winning cultural and news stories on health and environmental concerns in Los Alamos for which she won first place in documentaries from the Associated Press in New Mexico.
Ardalan earned a B.A. in communications and journalism from the University of New Mexico. She was born in San Francisco and has also lived and worked in Iran as a television newscaster. Ardalan attended elementary and middle school at Iranzamin International School in Tehran and graduated from Brookline High School in Brookline, M.A. Away from NPR, she is the mother of four.
