Del Irani is an Indian-Australian journalist based in the United States. She is the anchor of Deeper Look from New York on NHK World-Japan and a host on the ABC (Australia) lifestyle show Escape From The City.
Irani was previously a business and finance anchor on the ABC News morning show News Breakfast in Australia.
She began her career as field producer, working on programs for Fox News, CBS and Channel News Asia.
Irani was hired as a business journalist intern with Thomson Reuters in 2006, working for the 24-hour English news channel in India, Times Now.
In 2008, Irani became host of the nightly international news broadcast, Reuters World Report, where she covered Barack Obama’s 2008 U.S. presidential election win, Pervez Musharraf’s impeachment in Pakistan and the Mumbai terror attacks.
The following year, Irani was hired by BBC World News as a Mumbai correspondent and promoted to be anchor of India Business Report. During her time at the BBC, she was known as Delnaaz Irani and provided live coverage of breaking stories, including the trial of the lone surviving gunman in the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks.
In May 2012, Irani returned to Australia and joined ABC News as an anchor and reporter. In 2015, Irani was named to the ABC News Breakfast team as a business and finance anchor and was also a regular co-host with Michael Rowland and Virginia Trioli.
From 2013-2016, Irani was one of the creators and the anchor of the award-winning ABC talk show #TalkAboutIt. During the course of the show, Irani interacted with people on the street to discuss issues trending on social media or in the news. She also spoke with experts and leaders on wide-ranging topics from mental health and fertility to islamophobia, radicalization and racism. Irani has interviewed high-profile Bollywood celebrities on the show, including Shahrukh Khan, Amitabh Bachchan and Vidya Balan.
In 2015, Irani and her co-producers won an Australian National Press Club’s Higher Education Media Award for a #TalkAboutIt episode on international students.
She was appointed Fact Check Anchor for RMIT ABC Fact Check in 2017. In that role, she produced and hosted videos that determined the accuracy of claims made by public figures, including a response by Australia Federal MP Bob Katter to a question about same-sex marriage that went viral in December 2017.
Del Irani is one of five hosts of the lifestyle reality TV series, Escape From The City, along with Jane Hall, Simon Marnie, Bryce Holdaway and Dean Ipaviz. Produced by FremantleMedia Australia and debuting on ABC primetime in January 2019, it is an Australian adaptation of the BBC's Escape to the Country.
Irani was born in Mumbai and immigrated to Australia with her family when she was 8 years old. She grew up on the Lower North Shore of Sydney and graduated with a Bachelor of Commerce and a Bachelor of Science in Psychology double degree from the University of New South Wales (UNSW), completing her final year at the University of California, Berkeley on a study abroad scholarship.
In October 2020, World Vision Australia appointed Irani a Goodwill Ambassador "to inform and educate people about World Vision's work and empower them to get involved."
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