Hanson Hosein | TEDxSeattle
Hanson Hosein specializes in storytelling, social media strategies and business models of communication. He has spent his professional life seeking out the technological changes that are now upending traditional media.
Hanson was one of the first contributors to a nascent MSNBC.com. He produced pioneering digital content as a globetrotting solo broadcaster in the Middle East, Africa and Latin America.
His film, Independent America: The Two-Lane Search for Mom & Pop was an early exercise in the use of digital technology in storytelling and an ongoing interaction with an audience. Self-produced and self-financed, the award-winning documentary has been broadcast internationally, and airs regularly on the Sundance Channel in the United States. Perhaps more importantly, grassroots groups across America continue to screen the film as a tool to promote local economies.
Hanson’s latest film, Independent America: Rising from Ruins focuses on how small business helped resurrect New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, despite ruinous city policies favoring big box stores.
Through his company, HRH Media Inc., Hanson helps advise organizations and companies how to communicate effectively and directly by building relationships through storytelling and social media platforms.
In his previous career as a war correspondent, Hanson was embedded with the U.S. military in Iraq, reporting for NBC News. Often armed only with a laptop, satellite phone and camcorder, he filed ongoing live coverage from the Persian Gulf. He also covered the impact of the war from Beirut, Damascus, Amman and Jerusalem.
Hanson won Emmy and Overseas Press Club awards for his NBC News coverage “The Fall of Kosovo.” He was NBC’s Middle East Producer and MSNBC.com correspondent from 1997 to 2001. Prior to that served as an investigative producer at “NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw.”
He has an M.S. from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, and law degrees from Montreal’s McGill University and the University of Paris.
