For Nimra Iqbal, a career in television news was never part of the original plan.
A psychologist by education, a former university lecturer and someone who once dreamed of making her mark on the entertainment side of television, Nimra’s journey into news broadcasting has been shaped less by a carefully mapped career path and more by unexpected opportunities, persistence and, as she puts it, destiny.
Now, after making the move from 24 News to 92 News, the young anchor believes the latest chapter in her career is another step in a journey that has repeatedly taken her somewhere she never quite expected to be.
“I had one plan, and Allah had another,” she reflects.
That thought perhaps best captures Nimra’s professional journey.
Nimra hails from Tibba Sultan Pur in District Vehari. Her academic journey took her to Government College University (GCU) Lahore, where she studied Psychology before completing her master’s degree in the same subject.
She spent six years at GCU, building a strong academic foundation that could easily have led her toward a conventional career in psychology.
And for a while, that was exactly what she intended to do.
Nimra went on to work as a Visiting Lecturer at Bahauddin Zakariya University, Multan, for around a year and a half in 2020-2021, teaching Psychology at the master’s level.
But alongside her academic career was another ambition that had been quietly persistent.
Television.
“I was always interested in media, but on the entertainment side,” she says.
Acting was what initially attracted her to the screen. She tried to find opportunities and audition for acting projects in Lahore, but the right platform proved difficult to find. With much of Pakistan’s television and production industry concentrated in Karachi, breaking into acting from Lahore was not easy.
Her first significant appearance on screen eventually came through an LTN web series, Zindaan, where she played the daughter of veteran actor Babar Ali.
It was her first taste of acting and, for a time, seemed like the direction in which her television ambitions might develop.
But then came an opportunity she had not even been looking for.
Nimra never set out to become a news anchor.
In fact, she describes her entry into news almost casually.
She came across an advertisement for an internship at Lahore Rang and decided to apply simply to see what would happen.
“There was no particular desire to become an anchor. I just saw the internship advertisement for Lahore Rang and applied,” she recalls.
The organisation conducted a screen test and audition, and Nimra was selected for the internship.
What happened next changed the course of her career.
Among a large number of candidates, she eventually found herself on air.
She spent approximately a year and a half at Lahore Rang between 2023 and 2024, gaining her first substantial experience in television broadcasting.
The unexpected transition from psychology and teaching to television had begun.
From there, her professional journey took her through Aik News, followed by 24 News, and now 92 News.
By 2023, media had become her professional home.
There is an interesting irony in Nimra’s journey.
The career she actively pursued—acting—did not unfold in the way she had imagined. The career she never planned for—news broadcasting—gradually became the one she found herself enjoying.
“I love my work,” she says. “And most of all, I love being busy.”
That enthusiasm for the work appears to have been an important part of her evolution as a broadcaster.
Her academic background in psychology, meanwhile, gives another dimension to her professional identity. Before she was delivering news on television, she was teaching psychology to postgraduate students.
It is a journey that has taken her from classrooms to television studios, from academic lectures to live broadcasts, and from an interest in acting to a career in journalism.
For Nimra, however, these aren’t disconnected chapters.
They are all part of the same journey.
While every organisation she has worked with has contributed to her development, Nimra singles out her time at Aik News as particularly memorable.
“It was a great learning experience,” she says, adding that she learned the majority of what she knows about the profession during that phase of her career.
That period helped shape her as a broadcaster and gave her the experience required to progress further in an increasingly competitive television news industry.
Her move to 24 News represented another stage of that progression.
And now, her transition to 92 News marks the beginning of another chapter.
Her departure from 24 News and arrival at 92 News has naturally brought questions about what prompted the move.
For Nimra, however, career changes should not necessarily be viewed through the simple lens of one organisation being better or worse than another.
She believes much of a professional environment depends on the individual.
“No organisation is good or bad,” she says. “A person creates their own environment and can shape it the way they want.”
It is also a perspective rooted in her own experience.
When she left 24 News, she remembers being told that the organisation was a secure place and questioning why she would leave.
But Nimra does not see career security in such absolute terms.
“Nowhere is completely secure from a job perspective,” she says, while pointing out that when one opportunity ends, another—potentially better—can emerge.
For her, the move to 92 News is therefore not about closing one door. It is about continuing forward.
Nimra’s approach to her career is perhaps best explained by her belief in destiny.
She acknowledges that she had ambitions and made conscious efforts to pursue them. Acting was one such ambition. She auditioned, looked for opportunities and tried to make it work.
But it did not happen in quite the way she had envisioned.
News, on the other hand, happened almost by accident.
And today, she sees that difference as a lesson.
“News came into my life from Allah’s side,” she says. “Perhaps this was better for me.”
There is gratitude rather than disappointment in the way she talks about the path she did not take.
She believes that if Allah has brought someone this far, there must be something ahead as well.
Her arrival at 92 News, she says, is another part of that destiny and another opportunity to grow.
From a small town in District Vehari to GCU Lahore, from psychology classrooms at Bahauddin Zakariya University to an unexpected first appearance on television, Nimra Iqbal’s story has rarely followed a straight line.
She began as a student of psychology, became a lecturer, explored acting, stumbled into broadcasting through an internship, built her experience at Lahore Rang and Aik News, continued her growth at 24 News, and has now entered a new phase at 92 News.
What makes her story compelling is not simply the list of organisations or positions.
It is the fact that the career she has built was never the career she originally planned.
Sometimes, the unexpected opportunity becomes the defining one.
For Nimra Iqbal, the television screen may have been part of the dream from the beginning—but the newsroom was the destination she never knew she was heading toward.
And as she begins her journey at 92 News, she appears ready to embrace whatever the next chapter brings.
After all, if the journey so far has taught her anything, it is that the plan you make for yourself is only one version of the story.
Sometimes, the better story is the one life writes for you.
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