Rudabeh Bakhtiar (, born 21 June 1966), better known as Rudi Bakhtiar, is an Iranian-American journalist and television producer. She is a producer for Reuters in Washington, D.C. She is best known for anchoring CNN Headline News Tonight, as well as Anderson Cooper 360, Voice of America, and Reuters News. Early life and education Bakhtiar was born on June 21, 1966, in Fresno, California, as Rudabeh Carleen Bakhtiar to Iranian immigrants of Bakhtiari heritage. Her father died of oropharyngeal cancer in 2005. Bakhtiar has a younger brother and younger sister. Shapour Bakhtiar is Rudi Bakhtiar's father's uncle, the last prime minister of Iran under Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi; a great aunt of Bakhtiar's was the Shah of Iran's second wife (Soraya Esfandiary). Bakhtiar's great-grandfather is named Sardar Jang. By age two, her family moved from Fresno, to Los Angeles. When she was five, her family moved back to Iran, where she was raised until the 1979 Iranian Revolution. Her family moved back to the United States when she was 17. She loved to ride horses as a child. Other hobbies include whitewater rafting, waterskiing, snow skiing, horseback riding, tennis, yoga, tae kwon do, and oil painting in her downtime. She attended the University of California, Los Angeles, where she received a Bachelor of Science in biology in 1990, planning to be a dentist. She was accepted to New York University Dental School but had reservations about going to dental school. In addition, she studied architecture at the Career Discovery Program at the Harvard School of Design. Career In 1996, Bakhtiar joined CNN and held multiple positions in her nine years at the cable news network including anchoring CNN Headline News Tonight on the CNN Headline News network. She has co-anchored CNN's Emmy nominated CNN Newsroom and worked as a dedicated correspondent for Anderson Cooper 360. She has reported on assignments from numerous countries in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, including Rwanda, Ethiopia, South Africa, Iran, Israel, and Palestine. She also anchored the start of CNN's Headline News coverage of the September 11 attacks. She had left CNN to care for her dying father after almost 10 years in cable news. In January 2006, Bakhtiar joined Fox News Channel as a general correspondent, reporting on major international news stories such as the Ahmadinejad-al-Maliki summit in Tehran in September 2006 and the trial and execution of Saddam Hussein later that year.