Katherine Maher | |
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Born | Katherine Roberts Maher April 18, 1983 Wilton, Connecticut, U.S. |
Education | New York University (BA) |
Occupation | Non-profit executive |
Title | President and CEO of NPR |
Parents |
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Katherine Roberts Maher ( /mɑːr/ ; [1] born April 18, 1983) [2] is an American businesswoman. She is the chief executive officer (CEO) and president of National Public Radio (NPR) since March 2024, having succeeded John Lansing. [3] Prior to NPR, she was the CEO of Web Summit and chair of the board of directors at the Signal Foundation. She transitioned to the role of non-executive chairperson at Web Summit in March 2024. [4] [5] She is a former chief executive officer and executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation. [6] [7] [8]
A member of the Council on Foreign Relations, Maher worked for UNICEF, the National Democratic Institute, the World Bank and Access Now before joining the Wikimedia Foundation. She subsequently joined the Atlantic Council and the US Department of State's Foreign Affairs Policy Board.
Maher grew up in Wilton, Connecticut, [2] and attended Wilton High School. [9] Her father was a Goldman Sachs executive, Gordon Roberts Maher, and her mother was a Connecticut State Senator, Ceci Maher. [10]
After high school, Maher graduated from the Arabic Language Institute's Arabic Language Intensive Program of The American University in Cairo in 2003, which she recalled as a formative experience that developed her interest in the Middle East. [11] Maher subsequently studied at the Institut français d'études arabes de Damas in Syria and spent time in Lebanon and Tunisia. [2] [12] [13]
In 2005, Maher received a bachelor's degree from New York University in Middle Eastern and Islamic studies. [14] [15]
Maher originally intended to be an academic and work for human rights and international development organizations. [13]
After internships at the Council on Foreign Relations [16] and Eurasia Group, in 2004 and 2005, respectively, Maher began working at HSBC in London, Germany, and Canada as part of their international manager development program. [2] [ better source needed ]
In 2007, Maher returned to New York City, where from 2007 to 2010, she worked at UNICEF as an innovation and communication officer. She worked to promote the use of technology to improve people's lives. She traveled extensively to work on issues related to maternal health, HIV/AIDS prevention, and youth participation in technology. [2] One of her first projects at UNICEF involved testing MediaWiki extensions related to accessibility in Ethiopia. [17] Another project received USAid Development 2.0 Challenge grant funding to work on the use of mobile phones to monitor nutrition in children in Malawi.[ citation needed ]
From 2010 to 2011, Maher worked at the National Democratic Institute as an ICT program officer. [18] From 2011 to 2013, Maher worked at the World Bank as an ICT innovation specialist and consulted on technology for international development and democratization, working on ICT for accountability and governance with a focus on the role of mobile phones and other technologies in facilitating civil society and institutional reform, particularly in the Middle East and Africa. [19] She co-authored a chapter on "Making Government Mobile" for a World Bank publication entitled Information and Communications for Development 2012: Maximizing Mobile. [20] In 2012, Maher's Twitter feed on issues related to the Middle East was noted for its coverage of the Arab Spring. [21] [22]
From 2013 to 2014, Maher was advocacy director at the Washington, D.C.-based Access Now. [23] [24] As part of this work, she focused on the impact on people of laws about cybersecurity, morality, and defamation of the state that increase state censorship and reduce dissent. [25] Access was a signatory of the Declaration of Internet Freedom. [19]
Maher was chief communications officer of the Wikimedia Foundation from April 2014 to March 2016. [23] [26] [27] She was interviewed by The Washington Post on United States copyright law. [28]
Maher became interim executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation in March 2016 following the resignation of executive director Lila Tretikov [24] [29] and was appointed executive director on June 23, 2016. [6] [23]
In 2019, Maher became CEO of Wikimedia. [7] [ failed verification ]. She proposed potentially paying contributors to help address gaps in diversity. [30] Maher stepped down from her positions as CEO and executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation on April 15, 2021. [7] [8] Maryana Iskander was appointed as her successor.
Maher states that she focuses on global digital inclusion as a way to improve and protect people's rights to information through technology. [2] [31] [32] In a speech to the Atlantic Council Maher spoke about the challenge of combating disinformation, particularly around critical events like elections and the Covid pandemic. She described the First Amendment as a "number one challenge" in regulating content and fighting disinformation. [33] She also said during a TED Talk that "our reverence for the truth might be a distraction that’s getting in the way of finding common ground and getting things done.” [34]
From 2022 to 2023, Maher was a member of the US State Department's Foreign Affairs Policy Board, an expert panel established in 2011 by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to advise US officials. [35] [36] As of 2023, she chairs the board of directors of the Signal Foundation. [5] She is also the board chair of nonprofit organization, Adventure Scientists as of January 2023. [37] In October that year, Web Summit appointed Maher as its new chief executive, to replace Paddy Cosgrave. [38]
In January 2024, Maher was named CEO of NPR, and started her job in late March. She subsequently resigned from the Foreign Affairs Policy Board, but continued on the board of the Signal Foundation. [3]
In April 2024, Uri Berliner, NPR senior business editor, published accusations of left-wing bias at NPR in The Free Press. [39] Following Berliner's accusations, conservative journalists including Christopher Rufo criticized Maher for tweets she'd made supporting progressive policies and about Donald Trump in 2018. [39] On April 17, Berliner resigned after 25 years at NPR and criticized Maher's appointment as CEO in his public resignation letter. [40] [41]
Larry Sanger criticized Maher harshly for saying that Wikipedia's founding mission of being "free and open" would be "recapitulating" power structures. He told Christopher Rufo: "For the ex-CEO of Wikipedia to say that it was somehow a mistake for Wikipedia to be ‘free and open,’ that it led to bad consequences—my jaw is on the floor". [42]
Maher made campaign donations to the Democratic Party. [43] She has called Donald Trump “deranged racist sociopath”. Conservative media publications like the National Review and the New York Post accused Maher of strong left-wing political bias and criticized her appointment as CEO of NPR. [44] [34] [ better source needed ]
Maher married lawyer Ashutosh Upreti in July 2023. [5]
Andrea Jung is a Canadian-American executive, non-profit leader, and prominent women's-issues supporter based in New York City. In April 2014, she became president and CEO of Grameen America, a nonprofit microfinance organization founded by Nobel Peace Prize winner, Muhammad Yunus. From 1999 until 2012, she served as the first female CEO and chairman of Avon Products, Inc., a multi-level marketing company. Jung was also the first woman to serve as Chairman of the Cosmetic, Toiletry & Fragrance Association, and Chairman of the World Federation of Direct Selling Associations.
Winifred Mitchell Baker is the Chairwoman of the Mozilla Foundation and former CEO of the Mozilla Corporation, a subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation that coordinates development of the open source Mozilla Internet applications, including the Mozilla Firefox web browser. She left the CEO role in February, 2024.
The Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., abbreviated WMF, is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization headquartered in San Francisco, California, and registered there as a charitable foundation. It is best known as the host of Wikipedia, the seventh most visited website in the world. However, the foundation also hosts 14 other related content projects. It also supports the development of MediaWiki, the wiki software that underpins them all.
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Jillian C. York is an American free-expression activist and author. She serves as Director of International Freedom of Expression at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), and a founding member of Deep Lab. She is the author of Silicon Values: The Future of Free Speech Under Surveillance Capitalism and Morocco - Culture Smart!: the essential guide to customs & culture.
Catherine Brighid Livingstone is an Australian businesswoman who has held positions in the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, CSIRO, Macquarie Bank, and Telstra.
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NPR, full name National Public Radio, is a privately and publicly funded non-profit membership media organization that serves as a national syndicator to 797 public radio stations in the United States of America.
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Emna Mizouni is a Tunisian online and human rights activist, free-lance journalist, communications expert and business executive. After successfully helping to prepare RightsCon Tunis, in July 2019, Access Now, the international non-profit human rights group intent on an open Internet, announced her appointment to serve in their global board of directors. In March 2013, Mizouni founded Carthagina, an initiative designed to create interest in Tunisia's cultural heritage at home and abroad. In August 2019, at the Wikimedia Conference in Stockholm, she was honoured as Wikimedian of the Year 2019 as a result of the leading role she has played in the development of Arab and African communities as well as her success in promoting the history and culture of Tunisia.
María Sefidari Huici was the chair of the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees from July 2018 until June 2021, having been re-elected to the position in August 2019. Sefidari was named a Techweek "Women's Leadership Fellow" in 2014. In 2018, an essay she wrote about the upcoming European copyright reform was widely covered, including by TechCrunch and Boing Boing.
Maryana Iskander is an Egyptian-born American social entrepreneur and lawyer. In 2022, she became the chief executive officer (CEO) of the Wikimedia Foundation, succeeding Katherine Maher. Prior to her position, Iskander was the CEO of the Harambee Youth Employment Accelerator and a former chief operating officer of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America in New York.
Molly Allen White is an American software engineer, Wikipedia editor, and crypto skeptic. A critic of the decentralized blockchain (Web3) and cryptocurrency industries, she runs the website Web3 Is Going Just Great, which documents malfeasance in that technology space. She has appeared in Web3-related news, consulted on federal legislation for regulating the crypto industry, and successfully proposed that the Wikimedia Foundation cease to collect crypto donations. White additionally volunteers as a Wikipedia editor and is among the site's most active women. She has edited a range of articles on right-wing extremism.
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