After a postgraduate degree in journalism at City University, London, where she won the Broadcast Journalism Training Council Young Journalist of the Year award,[REF] Navai worked as the Tehran correspondent for The Times from 2003-06, where she covered events including the Bam earthquake,[REF] and parliamentary and presidential elections [REF].
Her report "Macedonia: Tracking Down the Refugee Kidnap Gangs"[REF] won the London Foreign Press Association for News Story of the Year: TV award,[REF] the Royal Television Society for The Independent Award,[REF] and was nominated for the Amnesty International Media Award for News Story of the Year [REF].