Shima Oliaee is a Peabody and duPont Award-winning journalist and the founder of Shirazad Productions.

Her work focuses on the stories of the marginalized, voices forced into silence, ignored or maligned by the media. 

Shirazad’s first series Pink Card premiered in 2023 at ESPN 30 for 30. It tells the story of three generations of women fighting to overthrow a dictatorship through soccer. The series received honors from the Overseas Press Club, a Murrow Award, two Gracie Awards, an International Sports Press Association Award, two NY Festival of the Arts Awards, and a National Headliner Award.

Oliaee’s follow-up series The Competition debuted in 2024. It follows seven teenagers competing for America's most lucrative scholarship for high school senior girls. The competition turned on its head when news of the overturn of Roe v Wade leaked on finals night. The show was honored at the Future of Media Awards, won a Signal Award, and The Guardian, Audible, and Mashable named it the best podcast of the year.

Oliaee’s Dolly Parton’s America, conceived of as a 9-part journey into American and feminist history through the prism of Dolly Parton’s life, received a Peabody Award, along with several national honors. Her follow-up doc The Flag and the Fury, about the fall of the Mississippi flag after George Floyd’s murder, earned her a duPont-Columbia Award.

She created, produced and reported The Vanishing of Harry Pace for Radiolab, about the color line in America, and her independently produced series on conversion therapy, UnErased, was named podcast of the year by KQED News. In 2023 Adweek named Oliaee podcast producer of the year.

Oliaee studied music production and cinema-television at USC, before receiving a graduate degree in psychology. She worked as a teacher, a translator, and in comedy television, including on the Golden Globe-winning Brooklyn Nine-Nine.