Veda Shastri

Video Journalist and documentary film maker

Veda Shastri is an independent video journalist and documentary filmmaker. She is a contributing story producer for National Geographic. She was earlier a producer at The New York Times, for her work at the NYT she has won an Online Journalism Award and an Edward R. Murrow Award. She reported and produced over 100 stories for the New York Times, from the nuclear power plant in Fukushima, Japan, inside a Black Hawk in Puerto Rico, to the lava fields of Iceland. She also produced a series on food scarcity in Venezuela, the series “Genocide’s Legacy,” as well as “Return to Mosul,” a family’s journey home to former ISIS territory in Iraq. 

Prior to joining the Times, Veda co-directed the VR documentary, “Return to Chernobyl” for PBS Frontline, which was nominated for an Online Journalism Award. She also directed the 2017 documentary short, “Ladies Only.” 

Veda earlier worked as a news producer at CNN-IBN, a television news channel headquartered in New Delhi, for 5 years, producing live news bulletins and special programming. Hailing from Boston, she has an MA from New York University’s Journalism and Documentary Film program, and a BA in Anthropology from Tufts University.