Isma’il Kushkush is a journalist who has contributed to The New York Times, CNN, the Associated Press (AP), Reuters, Voice of America, and Al Jazeera English. He was based in Khartoum, Sudan, for eight years, and for two three-month periods in 2014 and again in 2015, he was acting bureau chief for The New York Times in East Africa based in Nairobi, Kenya. He has covered political, economic, social, and cultural stories from Sudan, South Sudan, Kenya, Ethiopia, Somalia, Burundi, Sweden, Israel, the Palestinian territories, and the United States. He received a bachelors of arts degree in history and international relations from the University of California, Davis, with a focus on Africa and the Middle East, and a master of arts degree in journalism from Columbia Journalism School in New York, with a focus on politics and global affairs.