Shaheen Pasha is an associate teaching professor at Penn State, focused on mass incarceration and prison education. She is also co-founder and chief education officer of the Prison Journalism Project, a national, independent nonprofit initiative that publishes and teaches journalism to incarcerated writers. Prior to joining Penn State, Pasha was an assistant professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where she launched a successful, immersive explanatory journalism course at the Hampshire County Jail, bringing together incarcerated students and journalism students at UMass. Pasha was awarded the Knight Nieman Visiting Fellowship at Harvard University to expand her work, teaching journalism behind bars. She is also the recipient of a Fulbright Specialist designation to advise on journalism curriculum internationally and serves as co-academic director for the U.S. State Department's Study of U.S. Institute's Pakistan exchange program.

Pasha is a veteran journalist with 20 years of experience in the field. She worked as an international correspondent, covering legal issues and Islamic finance for Thomson Reuters in Dubai. She was also a staff writer for CNNMoney in New York, where she covered legal issues, the Enron trial, and the Supreme Court. She started her career at Dow Jones Newswires where she had a daily column in the Wall Street Journal and appeared as a daily correspondent for CNBC Asia, covering international stock action. Her freelance work has appeared in Nieman Reports, New England Public Radio, Dallas Morning News, Narratively, and USA Today, among other publications. She is the co-editor of the anthology, Mirror on the Veil: A Collection of Personal Essays on Hijab and Veiling (CCCP Press). Her essay on women’s anger was featured in the anthology Burn it Down (Seal Press).

Pasha received her bachelor's degree in Speech Communication at Pace University and her master's degree at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism.