Omid Memarian is a journalist and blogger, well known in Iran and beyond for his news analysis, regular columns and blogs in English and Persian. 

Omid is a freelance writer for the IPS news agency (Inter Press Service), Roozonline Daily, and BBC Persian. He is frequently invited to participate as a guest on panels dealing with Iran and he has had op-ed pieces published in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, OpenDemocracy, World Press and the Contra Costa Times. Omid was a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism in 2005. Currently, he is a peace fellow at the Graduate School of Journalism at UC Berkeley.

He has been involved in Civil Society activities all around the country since 2000. He has researched on the "Status of the civil society in Iran after revolution" has also been the editor in chief of “Volunteer Actor’s quarterly which mainly deals with civil society issues in the country in English and Farsi for two years.  During the last years he has covered prostitution in Dubai, World Summit on Information society in Geneva, Asylum seekers in Istanbul, IEARN conference in Japan and civil society delegation trip to Germany.

He has helped many foreign journalists who traveled to Iran to make stories in the last 6 years. In October 2004, he was arrested, along with two dozen other bloggers and journalists, and detained for almost two months. After he released he has been outspoken about what happened for him in public, to force to authorities not to do the same thing they did with them in the future with other journalists and bloggers. Omid has gotten Human Rights Watch's highest honor in 2005, Human Rights Defender Award.