I started my career in journalism in 1992 in Lahore as a researcher at Urdu daily Jang’s weekly magazine and moved to the editing desk of English daily The News International, also in Lahore, in early 1996. I worked as city editor and shift in charge during my four-year tenure at the newspaper before joining its weekly magazine, The News on Sunday, as a senior reporter, a position I held till December 2006. I also briefly served as deputy editor of the magazine in early 2007. Since then, I have worked as the Lahore bureau chief of Dawn Media Group’s English news monthly, Herald, between April 2007 and May 2010 and then as its editor between June 2010 and its shutting down in July 2019 under censorship pressure from its owners. In April 2020, I co-founded loksujag.com, an independent digital news media outlet based in Lahore and worked as its chief editor till November 9, 2022. Less than a year after quitting loksujag.com, I co-founded another independent news startup, Mauj Private Limited, which brought out its first publication, Earthwise, a quarterly online magazine dedicated to the coverage of energy transition and climate justice, in February 2024, with me as its chief editor. Alongside doing my day jobs in Pakistani newsrooms, I have also worked as Pakistan correspondent for Delhi-based English daily Mail Today for three years and as the deputy editor of the website of a regional non-profit, South Asian Free Media Association (SAFMA), for two years. Since early 2000s, I have also conducted trainings and done research studies for prominent Pakistani and international organizations including Panos South Asia, Reporters Without Borders, Friedrich Naumann Foundation, Oxfam, Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), Centre for Excellence in Journalism (CEJ) at the Institute of Business Administration (IBA), Karachi and Institute for Research, Advocacy and Development (IRADA). Since the middle of 2019, I have been also working in research and advocacy sector, first as a director of the Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI), one of Pakistan's premier research organizations, and then as the executive director of the Rural Development Policy Institute (RDPI), a research and advocacy organization focused on community-driven development approaches, local government and disaster risk reduction. In July 2021, I co-fonuded Policy Research Institute for Equitable Development (PRIED), an Islamabad-based independent think-tank focused on Pakistan's transition to renewable energy and climate justice.
