Naima has spent the last fifteen years working in News & Current Affairs as a television and audio producer.

Originally from Monterey, California, Naima holds a Master’s Degree in Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Chicago.

She began her career in the Middle East. First, in Yemen where she studied Arabic and wrote for the Yemen Times whilst managing the American Institute of Yemeni Studies (AIYS). Then, in Afghanistan where she worked on flagship media projects with Moby Media / TOLO TV. From the Middle East, she went back home for a while to spend a year on the NBC breaking news desk in New York City. She moved to Australia in 2012 and now calls the Northern Rivers in New South Wales, where she lives with her husband and their dog, home.

In Australia, she has worked across numerous networks and projects, most notably Channel Seven’s flagship news & current affairs program, Sunday Night and SBS’s award winning documentary program, Dateline. These programs saw her producing international stories – from illegal gold-mining in Peru, to the Zika virus in Brazil, to aged care in Denmark and Rural Depopulation in Spain.

In 2019 she went out on her own and founded Duststar Productions, and has produced four audio documentaries for Audible Originals: A Carnivore’s Crisis with Rachel Khoo, Age Against the Machine with Melissa Doyle, Every Body with Robyn Lawley; Surviving and Thriving in a Body Shaming World, and Power Talks with Kemi Nekvapil.

Naima is the co-author, alongside Melissa Doyle, of How To Age Against the Machine: An Empowering Guide for Women Ageing on Their Own Terms (Hardie Grant, 2023).

Her debut fiction, The Shot (Macmillan, 2023) was called “the most promisingly gruesome psychological thriller of 2023 in The Australia.

Her second novel, Mother Tongue, is coming out in 2025, also with Macmillan.

When she’s not working, you can find her reading, gardening, and taking way too many pictures of her dog, Wyatt.

Katy was born in South Africa and moved to England with her family when she was a teenager. After studying Marketing and Sociology at Uni in England, she went on to work in many different areas of marketing in the UK, including events, copy writing, journalism, advertising and digital marketing. She moved to Australia in 2008, fell in love with an Australian man, then some time later had two babies and has settled in Ballina, where she now lives with the loves of her life! Katy has her own graphic and web design company, Bluebury Creative. She met Naima during one of Katy’s holidays to Kiama and they have since become as close as family.