Hanson R. Hosein, Director, MCDM | Communication Leadership

Hanson Hosein serves as the Director of the Master of Communication in Communication Leadership program. He specializes in storytelling, social media strategies and business models of communication advising organizations such as Weber Shandwick, the Pacific Science Center and Tableau Software. Hanson’s book Storyteller Uprising: Trust and Persuasion in the Digital Age explores how individuals and organizations can tell their own multimedia stories and create their own channels of distribution — thereby serving as trusted sources in their own right.

He’s also the host of Four Peaks – the monthly Telly Award-winning UWTV series (formerly Media Space) that features interviews with the region’s influential network of visionaries and leaders. The TV show is just one element of a creative leadership network that Hanson co-founded, which is intended to drive innovation and entrepreneurship in the Pacific Northwest.

This pioneering work earned him Seattle Magazine’s “Most Influential” in fall 2010, particularly due to his role in hosting TEDx Seattle. Hanson directed the award-winning documentary films Rising from Ruins and Independent America: The Two-Lane Search for Mom & Pop, which have been broadcast around the world and prominently featured online, including on Hulu and Yahoo!’s homepages, as well as on Netflix and iTunes. He’s a former NBC News war correspondent, backpack journalist and investigative producer — and is a recipient of Overseas Press Club and Emmy Awards.

Hanson has spent his professional life seeking out the technological changes that are now upending traditional media.

He was one of the first contributors to a nascent MSNBC.com. He produced pioneering digital content as a globetrotting solo broadcaster in the Middle East, Africa and Latin America. And his film, Independent America: The Two-Lane Search for Mom & Pop was an early exercise in the use of digital technology in storytelling and an ongoing interaction with an audience.

Hanson’s second film, Independent America: Rising from Ruins, broadcasts regularly on Canada’s Super Channel and focuses on how small business helped resurrect New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, despite ruinous city policies favoring big box stores. It won the Patois Award for Best Feature at the New Orleans International Human Rights Film Festival in April 2009, and was an Official Selection of the 2009 Seattle International Film Festival.

In his previous career as a war correspondent, Hanson was embedded with the U.S. military in Iraq, reporting for NBC News, as well as for Canada’s CBC and Global News. Armed only with a laptop, satellite phone and camcorder, he filed ongoing live coverage from the Persian Gulf. He also covered the impact of the war from Beirut, Damascus, Amman and Jerusalem.

Hanson won Emmy and Overseas Press Club awards for his NBC News coverage “The Fall of Kosovo.” He was NBC’s Middle East Producer and MSNBC.com correspondent from 1997 to 2001. Prior to that served as an investigative producer at “NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw.”

He has an M.S. from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, and law degrees from Montreal’s McGill University and the University of Paris. He is a member of the bar in New York, and is retired from the practice of law in Massachusetts. Hanson is an affiliate member of the Jackson School’s Middle East Center as well as the Evans School of Public Affairs.