Azam Ahmed is an international investigative correspondent for The New York Times. His new book is Fear Is Just a Word: A Missing Daughter, a Violent Cartel, and a Mother's Quest for Vengeance.

“I think the fundamental question I always ask when I go into a new place, whether I’m covering currencies, or hedge funds, or geopolitics in Afghanistan, or the war—it’s what does this mean to the world right now? What does the world need to know and how does it fit into that space?”