​​Masih Alinejad is an Iranian‑American journalist, writer and women’s rights activist who fled Iran in 2009 and now lives in exile in New York. She holds a degree from Oxford Brookes University and works for Voice of America Persian News Network, contributes to IranWire and Radio Farda and appears on Manoto television. In 2014 she launched the social media campaign My Stealthy Freedom, inviting Iranian women to post images without their hijab in public, followed by related initiatives such as #WhiteWednesdays, #MyCameraIsMyWeapon and #MyPenIsMyWeapon. She has been the target of Iranian state threats and intimidation including repeated assassination and kidnapping plots uncovered by US authorities in 2021 and 2024. On November 2024 the US Department of Justice charged agents accused of surveilling and planning a murder‑for‑hire plot against her in New York, prompting condemnation from the Human Rights Foundation as a state‑sponsored assassination attempt. Alinejad has received numerous international awards including the 2015 Geneva Summit for Human Rights and Democracy Women’s Rights Award and was named a Time Women of the Year honouree in March 2023. She is also a signatory to the Statement of Fourteen Political Activists in 2019 calling for fundamental political change in Iran.