Suzanne Kianpour, BBC Journalist, Founder of Helmet to Heels, Washington, District of Columbia, United States
You might know Suzanne Kianpour as the reporter who brings us the world’s biggest breaking news stories, offering deep insights and analysis on major political and foreign policy issues.
Suzanne has reported from various conflict zones in the Middle East, traveled across Europe with then-Secretary of State John Kerry during the Iran nuclear negotiations, and covered the US detente with Cuba in Latin America, among other significant events.
I know these achievements sound monumental, and it might seem like Suzanne’s journey was free of professional or personal struggles, but life happens to all of us. Let’s discover the story behind Suzanne Kianpour, the woman.
1.Suzanne, you seem to have it all figured out. Tell us a bit about the moment you realized journalism was your true calling.
I really wish I had it all figured out. That being said, I knew from an early age that I wanted a life on the world stage, exploring, performing, and telling stories. They say that if, as an adult, you do what made you happy as a child, you’ll be the most fulfilled. As a child, my favorite days of the week were Fridays, not because the weekend was around the corner, but because we had current events day. Our assignment was to cut out articles of interest from the newspaper, summarize them, and present them in front of the class. 15 years later, I was paid to do that as my job, from NBC to Fox to BBC. I was always interested in languages and different countries. I used to read young adult historical fiction to learn new words, as funny as it sounds. I felt London calling when I watched the cartoon “Country Mouse and City Mouse,” where I learned Piccadilly Circus was a roundabout and not a place where animals and acrobats perform.
My coming of age coincided with a historic time in geopolitics, particularly the Kosovo war, which I learned about from “Time Magazine for Kids.” I became a voracious reader of writings and reporting about conflict, thinking I could understand how to stop or prevent it. I also had a tumultuous childhood, which made me far more aware of war and peace than the average little girl – a topic I’m exploring in my book. Watching the 9/11 attacks live on television in gym class made me realize the power of moving pictures.
My school was next to the CDC and there were fears of a biochemical attack so we had to do bomb shelter drills. The Iraq war and watching Christiane Amanpour report from the ground – a fellow half-Persian woman – sealed the deal for my career path. It took a while to weave in my love of artistic expression, particularly designing, portraits, and style into my career – not least because the beauty of fashion felt incongruent with the horrific realities of war and conflict. Until I moved to Beirut, my first foreign posting – and the true embodiment of a culture that encompasses both the grim and the glam. I used to choreograph amateur drama productions and charge entrance fees for my family, and I started my first business at age nine. I wasn’t challenged enough in school and would finish my work quickly, then start drawing. My classmates asked me to draw them in my clothes designs, and soon I had so many requests that I needed a business partner.
My friend Alana and I created S & A Arts, charging a nickel, dime, or quarter based on the size. Unfortunately, Sagamore Hills Elementary tried to kill my entrepreneurial spirit by shutting my business down for soliciting on campus. Now, a couple of decades later, I’m using fashion, design, and style to tell the stories of people in conflict zones and women building peace and security through my values-driven social impact media company, Helmet to Heels. I didn’t realize at the time when I was taking old Barbie clothes and denim and sewing them together to create purses and wallets as Christmas gifts for my family members that I was OG up cycling as a sustainability queen in the Y2K era.
2.With your helmet on, what was the biggest challenge as a woman in such a masculine environment (politics or war zones)? And how did you overcome it?
Being taken seriously. I was once told to glam it down before going on air – to take my makeup off and put my hair up – because my boss didn’t want me to be seen as just a pretty face. He wanted me to be seen as an authoritative and trusted source of news, implying that you couldn’t be feminine and serious. I think he genuinely meant to help and wanted me to be successful, but it reflected the deep sexism in the management of news networks. I took that underestimation and worked it to my advantage. How? You’ll have to read my book 🙂 I knew I’d overcome these obstacles when I purposely sat down for an exclusive interview with Mike Pompeo, the former CIA Director and Secretary of State, wearing leopard print platform Jimmy Choos. Throughout my documentary, “America’s Place in the World,” on serious foreign policy and national security topics, I wore a pink pussy-bow Diane Von Furstenberg silk top. I was completely covered and therefore conservative. I channeled my feminine power in the most masculine of realms.
3.I can imagine that you must have felt unsafe at times. What makes you keep going?
People often assume that the most unsafe a journalist feels is in bang-bang areas, the war zones where actual fighting is taking place. Covering politics and navigating the television news and corporate world is just as precarious, albeit in a mental and emotional way rather than directly physical – dodging people with malicious intent, sifting through lies, identifying the spies and snakes, and dealing with inevitable backstabbing on the way up the corporate ladder no matter how guarded or rule-following you are. When you’re just starting out, do you have your dreams for me? It was to have my own show. That was reaching the top. And I got there with my Women Building Peace series – a program I created from scratch that I first started to recognize was necessary on my deployment to Iraq in 2014 when I saw the stories of the women in these conflict zones didn’t have a real space in our coverage. It took seven years for me to get it off the ground and I’m forever grateful to the man who made it happen – Steve Titherington the commissioning editor at the time. He recognized my foreign policy experience and asked me to host a documentary. I delivered beyond what was expected with several exclusives the BBC had struggled to get before, including Mitt Romney who never does interviews. He turned me into a presenter/anchor, commissioned my series, assigned the absolute best producer Nicola Addyman, and next thing you know we had Hillary Clinton speaking directly to an Afghan girl hiding from the Taliban and a safe house – an event that the young woman later told me was the reason why she was able to mentally Ollie hold on and escape. That episode changed my life. He then asked me to produce and present an hour-long documentary on the Iran versus Israel shadow war – a covert conflict that I was deeply knowledgeable about. These two programs got me shortlisted for presenter of the year by the association of international broadcasters in London, November 2023.
All of this ended up serving as the catalyst to what is now the movement I’ve created with Helmet to Heels – through which I am continuing the Women Building programming, expanding it across industries, and turning it into a franchise. It was also then when the knives came out.
4.When switching to high heels, what is your favorite thing to do for yourself, to embrace your femininity and keep it alive?
The best decision I ever made for myself and for nurturing my femininity was joining a ballet studio in Dubai. The irony is that my home in Washington is literally across the street from the Washington Ballet and I would walk by it every day, but I was so in my masculine quite frankly, that it didn’t even cross my mind to go and check it out and go back to my childhood roots as a ballerina before took a turn towards the tomboy aesthetic. It’s an amazing workout – graceful, elegant, and peaceful. I get lost in it. The music is soft, and it nurtures my inner child – the one we all have and often ignore. It romanticizes my life, and I highly recommend it for every woman, no matter how old.
5.At the end of the day, when everything slows down, who is Suzanne?
I once was called a “brainy glamazon,” and I kind of dig it, so let’s go with that.
By Bianca Bonta (Ruta)
