Rita Panahi

Rita Panahi (born 3 March 1976) is an Australian journalist, news anchor, and columnist. She works for The Herald and Weekly Times (HWT), a subsidiary of News Corp Australia and is the host of The Rita Panahi Show and The Friday Show on Sky News Australia and is a contributor to Sunrise on the Seven Network. She is on the radio at 3AW and 2GB. Panahi also hosts her very popular “Lefties Losing It” compilations. Early life and education Rita Panahi was born in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, United States, the child of Iranian parents. Her mother was a midwife and her father was an agricultural engineer. The family returned to Iran during her infancy, living on the coast and moving to Tehran by 1979. Her mother worked for a hospital associated with the Shah during the Iranian Revolution. Panahi described her parents as "relaxed Muslims who were not particularly political". However, her family was targeted by the Shia Islamist government of the Ayatollah Khomeini. In 1984, they were accepted by Australia as refugees and lived in Melbourne. Panahi worked in banking while attending Monash University, studying but not completing a Bachelor of Business Finance. She joined Australian Young Labor and volunteered in the 1996 election campaign. Panahi worked as a personal banker at Colonial Mutual and was the youngest branch manager in the company's history. She has a child with an undisclosed father and was a single parent as of 2016.