Family and friends recall ‘her powerful ability to turn around people’s lives for the better’

This article is more than 10 months old

This article is more than 10 months old

The award-winning journalist and broadcaster Tazeen Ahmad has died, her family have said. Ahmad was praised for her work in shining a light on important stories with “care, sympathy and integrity” across her extensive career.

She worked for the BBC and was part of the Channel 4 Dispatches team that won an RTS television journalism award and was nominated for a current affairs TV Bafta for the documentary The Hunt for Britain’s Sex Gangs.

Judges at the RTS 2012/13 awards described the documentary as the “culmination of a remarkable body of work spanning almost two decades. It required the negotiation of unprecedented behind the scenes access, great sensitivity towards both victims and investigators and unquenchable journalistic perseverance”.

Besides her work for various television and radio networks, including BBC Three’s Liquid News and the channel’s 60 Seconds bulletins, Ahmad was also a foreign correspondent for NBC News in the US.

Ahmad contributed to several newspapers and magazines and, in 2009, wrote the book The Check-out Girl, detailing her undercover work in a supermarket at the height of the recession.

“Tazeen was an amazing individual truly loved by her family and friends,” her brothers Faheem and Nadeem said. “She encouraged and motivated and left a lasting impression on everyone she met both through her professional and personal life.

“We remain immensely proud of all she achieved – as a mother, journalist, writer and for her coaching work. So many people have been in touch remarking on her powerful ability to turn around people’s lives for the better.

“Her groundbreaking and award-winning television reporting work took her across the world into some of its most troubled areas and, at home in the UK, Tazeen tackled difficult but crucial subjects which resulted in real change.

“She was so proud of her two young boys who are left to remember their loving, kind, smart, nurturing, beautiful mama. She was in an amazing room filled with sunflowers, cushions, candles and an abundance of love when she passed away, surrounded by her close friends and family. She will truly never be forgotten.”

The actor Adil Ray was among those to pay tribute to Ahmad, writing on Twitter that Ahmad was “committed to real, authentic issues & an amazing ability to tell the stories to a wider audience”.

“She was always lovely & full of joy. Thoughts with her family,” he added.