Heather Allan is the Senior Vice President of Newsgathering for Al Jazeera America, where she oversees all of AJAM’s news coverage.
With over 30 years of experience in newsgathering and production, Allan joined Al Jazeera America in 2015 from sister network Al Jazeera English, where she served as Head of Global News Gathering. In that role, Allan was responsible for managing all aspects of global news coverage from the network’s 34 bureaus across the world. Allan played a key role in the 2013 launch of Al Jazeera America, setting up all of the channel’s domestic bureaus and recruiting news staff for each location.
Prior to Al Jazeera English, Allan was at NBC News for 30 years, where she most recently served in the role of West Coast Bureau Chief, covering major U.S. stories from the 1989 San Francisco earthquake, the Rodney King trial and verdict, the Laguna Beach fires, the OJ Simpson murder trial, Hurricane Katrina, the Virginia Tech shootings and more.
Allan began her career in journalism at various news positions at NBC News, ABC News and South African Broadcasting in Johannesburg, South Africa. Allan has a Bachelor’s degree in International Relations, Political Science and African Government from the University of Witwatersrand Johannesburg.