NPR Social Storyteller Moderates Twitter Campaign around Women in Technology

Davar Ardalan, SAG-AFTRA member and senior producer of NPR’s Tell Me More with Michel Martin, oversees the live broadcast and leads social media campaigns for the program. As a social storyteller, she is a driving voice across social media platforms and has proven success engaging diverse communities and influencers.

Ardalan recently concluded moderating an entire month of Twitter chats around #NPRWIT — Women in Technology. Throughout March, women innovators across the globe participated in live-tweets about a day in their lives using #NPRWIT. A master inventor from IBM, a technology executive from American Express and entrepreneurs from Silicon Valley to South Africa represented some of the women taking part, allowing followers to experience the impact that women are making across the world in the field of technology, science, entrepreneurship and innovation.

The monthlong series was incredibly successful, with approximately 9,000 tweets reaching 16 million people and creating 77 million impressions on Twitter. Many of the women engaged were African-American, Latino and Asian-American influencers in the technology world. 

“As a longtime NPR journalist, I found these chats invigorating and inspiring,” explained Ardalan. “There were times when I viewed the interactions as if they were coming from live guests, sitting right there with me in the studio, but would then remember the full scope of what we were doing in 140 characters all over the world. I believe that social media is an open door to freer speech, expanded idea-sharing and inspired innovation, and that it makes me a better and more informed journalist.”

To add to her already impressive list of accolades, Ardalan was recently selected as a 2014 Ellis Island Medal of Honor recipient — an award granted to American citizens who have distinguished themselves within their ethnic group while exemplifying the values of the American way of life.

“For me this is recognition of my family’s collective history,” explained Ardalan as she told the story of her grandfather’s immigration from Iran to Ellis Island in 1919, and of the discovery of a mountain in central Iran being named after her grandmother, Helen Jeffreys of Weiser, Idaho, a public health nurse who traveled as part of President Truman’s Point Four mission.

Congratulations to Davar Ardalan, from your friends and peers at SAG-AFTRA!

This item was originally featured in the July 2014 local newsletter.