Zohreen Shah Biography

Zohreen Shah is a Los Angeles-based national reporter for ABC News, predominantly covering stories in the western regions of the country for all platforms including “Good Morning America,” “World News Tonight,” “ABC News Live” and “Nightline.”

Recently, Zohreen has covered the midterm primaries, including elections in California, Oregon, Washington, Nevada and Colorado. She started at ABC as a political embed - getting her job in part from tweeting ABC’s political director and sending tips from the West Coast over a series of months.

She went on to closely cover Kamala Harris, Andrew Yang and Michael Bloomberg and traveled to half the states in the country over less than a year. As a multi-platform reporter, she landed multiple exclusives with California Governor Gavin Newsom right before his high-profile recall election, including the only sit-down interview with Newsom and Senator Elizabeth Warren, and every major Republican challenger in the race. She also frequently covers entertainment stories, including interviews with Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman, Priyanka Chopra, Sean Penn, and the cast of Star Wars’ Obi-Wan Kenobi. She is passionate about bringing stories about her South Asian community to the network, recently covering Eid, the country’s largest Ramadan food festival, Diwali and the first large “Holi” celebration live to a national morning show. She has also extensively covered covid, wildfires throughout the west, and segments about the impact of Washington on regular Americans.

Previously, Zohreen served as a pop news anchor on Good Day L.A. in Los Angeles, and field reporter covering the San Bernardino Massacre, Porter Ranch gas leak and the Led Zeppelin copyright trial.

Prior to working in Los Angeles, Zohreen was a reporter in San Diego, often covering immigration, climate change and sports stories for the market’s top morning show. She began her TV career in Sacramento, where she served as a pop news anchor while also serving as the station’s web editor. During her free time when she wasn’t in-studio or in the field covering a story, she also started a series during her free time called “Capitol Conversations” with California’s top politicians

Zohreen got her start in journalism at the LA Times - writing for the Times’ tech blog. In her free time, she started the first podcast for the paper, where she interviewed reporters about how they landed their stories. She is familiar with being a journalism entrepreneur, having started her school’s first newspaper in middle school.

Her formal journalism training came after graduating UCLA at Columbia Journalism School where she received a broadcast master's degree. During her time there, she covered New York City’s housing projects and reported from Israel and Palestine. While in New York, 60 Minutes also requested her to help translate interviews shot in Pakistan for a Steve Kroft piece.

Zohreen is a passionate mentor to many in the newsroom, having started her own TV career after seeing Zain Verjee on television in her early 20s. She is also a dog-mom to Miles Davis, her rescue pup, and prides herself on being an expert on knowing LA inside and out, where she has lived in over 10 neighborhoods.