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Raza Ahmad Rumi is Director Park Center for Independent Media, Ithaca College and Visiting Faculty at Cornell Institute for Public Affairs. Raza has been the editor, Daily Times and Friday Times (Pakistan). He has also been a fellow at New America Foundation, United States Institute of Peace and National Endowment for Democracy. Raza continues to be the consulting editor for weekly The Friday Times, and a senior fellow at the Jinnah Institute in Islamabad. In addition, he has been a commentator and a current affairs talk show host in Pakistan and is affiliated with the Express TV, Pakistan. He contributes regularly to Foreign Policy, Huffington Post, New York Times, The Diplomat, Fair Observer, CNN and Al Jazeera, Daily O, Scroll India, The Hindu and Indian Express. His columns for the Express Tribune can be accessed here.

Prior to his career in journalism, Raza worked for nearly a decade as a governance and capacity development specialist for the Asian Development Bank, the Government of Pakistan, a number of Pakistani nongovernmental organizations, and the United Nations Mission in Kosovo. He has also been an academic adviser to the Network of Asia Pacific Schools and Institutes of Public Administration and Governance (NAPSIPAG); a public policy adviser to LEAD Pakistan, a nonprofit focused on sustainable development; and is an advisory board member of both the ASR Resource Centre and the South Asian Institute of Women's Studies in Lahore. As a freelance policy professional/consultant he continues to advise international development organizations, governments and NGOs.

Mr. Rumi contributes regularly to Pakistani and international papers and news outlets on politics, policy and governance, history, and South Asian arts and culture. 

His books include Delhi by Heart: Impressions of a Pakistani Traveler (Harper Collins, 2013), The Fractious Path: Pakistan’s Democratic Transition and Identity and Faith and Conflict. His most recent collection of essays Being Pakistani was published in 2018 by Harper Collins.

He holds a Bachelor’s in Economics and a Masters in Social Planning, both from the London School of Economics. He has also been trained in law and public administration at the Civil Services Academy in Lahore.

In March 2014, he survived an assassination attempt in which his driver lost his life. Within weeks, he left Pakistan for security reasons. [Read this post by Committee to Protect Journalists].

P.S. Jahane Rumi started as a blog and now a personal a website devoted to Sufi thought, the arts, literature, and cultures of South Asia. Raza also blogs at cyber-magazines Pak Tea House & Lahore Nama . ‘Raza Rumi’ was adopted as a nom de plume in 2005 to keep his personal writings and opinions separate from the day job[s] in government and development institutions. Raza Rumi’s alter-ego has several development reports, academic and policy publications to his credit.