Katherine Maher

Maher grew up in Wilton, Connecticut,^[2] and attended Wilton High School.^[9] Her father, Gordon Roberts Maher, worked in finance in New York City and witnessed the September 11 attacks. He died in 2020.^[10] Her mother, Ceci Maher, is a former non-profit executive who was elected to the Connecticut State Senate in 2022.^[11] Katherine has two younger brothers.^[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.^[12] Maher subsequently studied at the Institut français d'études arabes de Damas in Syria and spent time in Lebanon and Tunisia.^[2][13][14]

In 2005, Maher received a bachelor's degree from New York University in Middle Eastern and Islamic studies.^[15][16]

Maher originally intended to be an academic and work for human rights and international development organizations.^[14]

After internships at the Council on Foreign Relations^[17] 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.^[18] 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.^[19] 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.^[20] She co-authored a chapter on "Making Government Mobile" for a World Bank publication entitled Information and Communications for Development 2012: Maximizing Mobile.^[21] In 2012, Maher's Twitter feed on issues related to the Middle East was noted for its coverage of the Arab Spring.^[22][23]

From 2013 to 2014, Maher was advocacy director at the Washington, D.C.-based Access Now.^[24][25] 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.^[26] Access was a signatory of the Declaration of Internet Freedom.^[20]

Maher was chief communications officer of the Wikimedia Foundation from April 2014 to March 2016.^[24][27][28] She was interviewed by The Washington Post on United States copyright law.^[29]

Maher became interim executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation in March 2016 following the resignation of executive director Lila Tretikov^[25][30] and was appointed executive director on June 23, 2016.^[6][24]

In 2019, Maher became CEO of Wikimedia.^{[7][failed verification]}. She proposed potentially paying contributors to help address gaps in diversity.^[31] 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][32][33] 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.^[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] as well as comments Maher made about the First Amendment as "the number one challenge" in the fight against disinformation in a 2021 interview. On April 17, following NPR suspending Berliner, he resigned after 25 years at NPR and criticized Maher's appointment as CEO. Maher defended NPR's record, and stated that her comments regarding the First Amendment were misrepresented and that she has a "robust belief in the First Amendment".^[40]

Maher made campaign donations to the Democratic Party.^[41]

Maher married lawyer Ashutosh Upreti in July 2023.^[5]

• In 2013, The Diplomatic Courier named her as one of 99 leading foreign policy professionals under age 33.^[12][42]

• American University of Beirut, Member of the Board^[43]
• Council on Foreign Relations, Member^[43]
• Sunlight Foundation, Member of the Board^[43]
• 2011: Youth for Technology Foundation, Member of the Board^[44]
• 2013: Truman National Security Project, Policy Fellow, National Security Fellow, and Research Fellow, Democracy & Human Rights Initiative^[45][46]
• 2013: Open Technology Fund, Advisory Committee Member^[47]
• 2016: World Economic Forum, Member, Global Network Council on the Future of Human Rights^[48][49]
• 2018: Oxford Union, on Technology and Empire^[50]
• 2019: World Economic Forum Young Global Leader^[51]
• 2021: Atlantic Council Democracy & Tech Initiative, Senior Fellow^[52][53]
• 2022: US State Department, member of the Foreign Affairs Policy Board^[35][36]

• Maher, Katherine (December 2010). "Food Fights—Nick Cullather's The Hungry World: America's Cold War Battle Against Poverty in Asia". Bookforum.
• Maher, Katherine (March 21, 2011). "SXSW festival takes on board use of technology for social impact". The Guardian.
• Maher, Katherine (August 17, 2012). "Did the Bounds of Cyber War Just Expand to Banks and Neutral States?". The Atlantic.
• Raja, Siddhartha; Melhem, Samia; Cruse, Matthew; Goldstein, Joshua; Maher, Katherine; Minges, Michael; Surya, Priya (August 2012). "Chapter 6: Making Government Mobile" (PDF). Information and Communications for Development 2012: Maximizing Mobile. Washington, DC: World Bank. pp. 87–101. doi:10.1596/9780821389911_ch06. ISBN 978-0-8213-8991-1. OCLC 895048866.
• Maher, Katherine; York, Jillian C. (2013). "Origins of the Tunisian Internet". In Hussain, Muzammil M.; Howard, Philip N. (eds.). State Power 2.0: Authoritarian Entrenchment and Political Engagement Worldwide. Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing Group. ISBN 978-1-4094-5469-4. OCLC 940726016.
• Maher, Katherine (February 25, 2013). "The New Westphalian Web: The future of the Internet may lie in the past. And that's not a good thing". Foreign Policy. Archived from the original on March 5, 2015.
• Maher, Katherine (March 19, 2014). "No, the U.S. Isn't 'Giving Up Control' of the Internet". Politico. Archived from the original on August 6, 2020. Retrieved March 19, 2016.
• Maher, Katherine (December 5, 2016). "The Sum of All Knowledge" (Video). Google Talks.
• Maher, Katherine (October 4, 2017). "How Wikipedia Changed The Exchange Of Knowledge (And Where It's Going Next)". Forbes.
• Maher, Katherine (October 17, 2017). "Will Wikipedia Exist in 20 Years?" (Video). Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University.
• Maher, Katherine (March 12, 2019). "Without Humans, A.I. Can Wreak Havoc". The New York Times.

• List of Wikipedia people

• Cooper, Chet (October 13, 2020). "Katherine Maher, CEO and Executive Director of Wikimedia Foundation". Ability. Retrieved October 13, 2020.

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