Katherine Maher

A trustee since 2020, Katherine Maher is the President & CEO of NPR, the American public broadcaster. She was previously the chief executive officer of Web Summit and the Wikimedia Foundation, responsible for the success of Wikipedia, one of the world's most popular digital platforms. Before Wikimedia, Maher worked on rights, democracy, and innovation at Access Now, the World Bank, the National Democratic Institute, and UNICEF. She is Chair of the Board of Signal Foundation, a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council for democracy and technology, a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader, and a security fellow at the Truman National Security Project; and from 2022 to 2024 served as an advisor to the U.S. Secretary of State's Foreign Affairs Policy. She serves on the boards of the Center for Democracy and Technology and Consumer Reports. Her writings on human rights, technology and foreign policy have appeared in various publications. Maher graduated magna cum laude from New York University (BA, ’05) with a degree in Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies after studying at the Arabic Language Institute of the American University in Cairo, Egypt, and the French Institute of Arab Studies in Damascus, Syria.