.jpg)
Who’s Who
Photo Credit: A journalist is photographed before entering a court in Hong Kong. AP/Vincent Yu
CHAIR
Darren Walker
Ford Foundation
See full bioDarren Walker
Ford Foundation
Darren Walker is president of the Ford Foundation, a $16 billion international social justice philanthropy. The Ford Foundation has been a generous supporter of CPJ.
Walker is a member of the Reimagining New York Commission and co-chair of NYC Census 2020. He chaired the philanthropy committee that brought a resolution to the city of Detroit’s historic bankruptcy. Under his leadership, the Ford Foundation became the first nonprofit in U.S. history to issue a $1 billion designated social bond in U.S. capital markets for proceeds to strengthen and stabilize nonprofit organizations in the wake of COVID-19.
Before joining Ford, Walker was vice president at Rockefeller Foundation, overseeing global and domestic programs. In the 1990s, he was COO of the Abyssinian Development Corporation, Harlem’s largest community development organization.
Walker co-chairs New York City’s Mayoral Advisory Commission on City Art, Monuments, and Markers, and has served on the Independent Commission on New York City Criminal Justice and Incarceration Reform and the UN International Labour Organization Global Commission on the Future of Work. He co-founded both the US Impact Investing Alliance and the Presidents’ Council on Disability Inclusion in Philanthropy and is a founding member of the Board Diversity Action Alliance. He serves on many boards, including Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, the National Gallery of Art, Carnegie Hall, the High Line, the Committee to Protect Journalists, and the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture. In the summer of 2020, he was appointed to the boards of Square and Ralph Lauren. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society and is the recipient of 16 honorary degrees and university awards, including Harvard University’s Word.E.B. Du Bois Medal.
Educated exclusively in public schools, Walker was a member of the first Head Start class in 1965 and received BA, BS, and JD degrees from the University of Texas at Austin. He has been included on numerous leadership lists: Time’s annual 100 Most Influential People, Rolling Stone’s 25 People Shaping the Future, Fast Company’s Most Creative People in Business, Ebony’s Power 100, and Out magazine’s Power 50. Most recently, Walker was named The Wall Street Journal’s 2020 Philanthropy Innovator.
HOST
David Muir
ABC News
See full bioDavid Muir
Anchor, “ABC World News Tonight,” ABC News
David Muir is an Emmy Award-winning journalist for ABC News. Muir is the anchor and managing editor of ABC World News Tonight with David Muir and co-anchor of ABC’s 20/20. Since joining ABC News, Muir has reported on nearly every major story of our time with global dispatches from Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Tahrir Square, Mogadishu, Gaza, Guantanamo, Fukushima, Beirut, Amman, and the Syrian border.
Muir’s exclusive interviews generate global headlines. He landed the first interview with President Donald Trump in the White House. He also conducted the first network interview with President Trump during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the first joint interview with former Vice President Joe Biden and his running mate, Senator Kamala Harris. He traveled to Afghanistan to interview the top U.S. commander amid talks with the Taliban and traveled to Iraq to interview top American military leaders in the fight against ISIS. Muir interviewed Iranian President Hassan Rouhani after the U.S. pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal. He secured the exclusive interview with President Barack Obama during the former president’s historic trip to Cuba. He conducted the historic sit-down with Pope Francis inside the Vatican, moderating the first-ever town hall, Pope Francis and the People, conducting the town hall in Spanish. He moderated a town hall with President Barack Obama, The President and the People: A National Conversation about race, policing and efforts to bridge the divide, earning an Emmy for his work.
Muir has reported numerous in-depth specials for ABC News. He reported The Children of Auschwitz, documenting the journey back for Holocaust survivors returning to Poland 75 years after the liberation of Auschwitz. He profiled World War II veterans who stormed the beaches of Normandy returning to France 75 years after changing the course of history. He spent more than a year reporting Breaking Point: Heroin in America and Flashpoint: Refugees in America. He was the first to anchor from the scene of Europe’s refugee crisis, reporting from the Hungarian/Serbian border. He also reported from the Syrian border on child refugees. He gained rare access to Guantanamo prison and traveled to Amman, Jordan to report on the vetting of refugees coming to the United States.
During the 2016 and 2020 campaigns, Muir has served as a moderator for both Democratic and Republican Presidential primary debates and conducted numerous interviews with presidential candidates including former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. It was during his exclusive interview with Secretary Clinton she apologized to the American people for her use of a private e-mail server.
Muir’s reporting has been honored with multiple Emmys, Edward R. Murrow awards and the Society of Professional Journalists has honored him for his reporting overseas.
A magna cum laude graduate of Ithaca College, Muir attended the Institute on Political Journalism at Georgetown University and studied at the University of Salamanca in Spain.
PRESENTERS
Amanda Bennett
See full bioAmanda Bennett
Amanda Bennett is a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, investigative journalist and editor, and former foreign correspondent with a longtime interest in issues of free press and safety. She joined CPJ’s board in 2016. She served as director of Voice of America from 2016 through 2020. She is also a contributing columnist for The Washington Post. Through 2013, Bennett was executive editor of Bloomberg News, where she created and ran a global investigative team and co-founded Bloomberg News’ Women’s project. She was previously editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Herald-Leader in Lexington, Kentucky. Bennett also served as managing editor/projects for The Oregonian in Portland, Oregon.
Ed Yong
The Atlantic
See full bioEd Yong
Ed Yong is a science journalist who reports for The Atlantic. He is based in Washington, DC. For his coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic, he won the Pulitzer Prize in explanatory journalism; the George Polk Award for science reporting; the Victor Cohn Prize for medical science reporting, the Neil and Susan Sheehan Award for investigative journalism; the John P. McGovern Award from the American Medical Writers’ Association; and the AAAS Kavli Science Journalism Award for in-depth reporting.
.png)
Nima Elbagir
CNN
See full bioNima Elbagir
CNN
Nima Elbagir is an award-winning senior international correspondent for CNN based in London. She was named the 2020 Royal Television Society “Television Journalist of the Year” and received the prestigious 2019 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Awards in the Investigative category for her reporting on human rights abuses. Known for her impactful investigative journalism, Elbagir has uncovered human rights abuses around the world in places like the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Libya, and Sudan. She has reported extensively from Yemen on the country’s ongoing humanitarian crisis and civil war, focusing much of her investigative work on American-made weapons used by the Saudi-led coalition in deadly attacks on civilians. Most recently, Elbagir reported from Ethiopia on the ongoing assault against civilians in the Tigray region by Ethiopian and Eritrean forces. Her exclusive reporting has prompted international outcry, even leading to the release of hundreds of Tigrayans from Ethiopian and Eritrean forces.
Ronan Farrow
The New Yorker
See full bioRonan Farrow
The New Yorker
Ronan Farrow is an investigative reporter and a contributing writer to The New Yorker. He is also currently producing documentaries for HBO.
His stories for The New Yorker exposed the first sexual-assault allegations against the movie producer Harvey Weinstein and the first misconduct allegations against CBS executives, including then CEO Leslie Moonves. He was also responsible for the first detailed accounts of payments made by the National Enquirer’s parent company in order to suppress stories about Donald Trump during the 2016 Presidential campaign. For his reporting on Weinstein, Farrow won the Pulitzer Prize for public service, the National Magazine Award, and the George Polk Award, among other honors.
He previously worked as an anchor and investigative reporter at MSNBC and NBC News, with his print commentary and reporting appearing in publications including The Wall Street Journal, the LA Times, and The Washington Post. Farrow is the author of “War on Peace: The End of Diplomacy and the Decline of American Influence” and “Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators.”
He is a graduate of Yale Law School and a member of the New York Bar. He recently completed a Ph.D. in political science at Oxford University, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar. Prior to his career in journalism, he served as a State Department official in Afghanistan and Pakistan. He lives in New York.
Spotlight
Alberto Ibargüen
Knight Foundation
See full bioAlberto Ibargüen
President, CEO of the John S. & James L. Knight Foundation
Alberto Ibargüen is president and CEO of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. The foundation promotes informed and engaged communities in the United States through grants to support free expression, journalism, community engagement, arts and culture in community and research into the impact of media on trust and democracy.
Ibargüen is the former publisher of The Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald. During his tenure, The Miami Herald won three Pulitzer Prizes and El Nuevo Herald won Spain’s Ortega y Gasset Prize for excellence in Spanish language journalism. For his work to protect journalists in Latin America, he received a Maria Moors Cabot citation from Columbia University. He holds honorary degrees from Wesleyan and the George Washington University, and is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.
He graduated from Wesleyan University and the University of Pennsylvania Law School. He served in the Peace Corps in Venezuela’s Amazon Territory and in Colombia. He practiced law in Hartford, Connecticut, until he joined the Hartford Courant, then Newsday in New York, before moving to Miami.
He is the former board chair of PBS, the Newseum in Washington DC, and of the World Wide Web Foundation, founded by Web inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee. He has served on the boards of numerous other organizations, including Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, ProPublica, Wesleyan University, Smith College, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Committee to Protect Journalists. He has served on the board of directors of PepsiCo, American Airlines, AOL and Norwegian Cruise Lines
Kathleen Carroll
CPJ
See full bio
Kathleen Carroll
Board Chair, CPJ
Kathleen Carroll is a veteran journalism leader and press freedom advocate. Since 2017, she has chaired CPJ’s board.
From 2002 through 2016, Carroll was executive editor and senior vice president of The Associated Press. As the top news executive of the world’s largest independent news agency, she was responsible for coverage from journalists in more than 100 countries, including groundbreaking new bureaus in North Korea and Myanmar. Under her leadership, AP journalists won numerous awards, among them five Pulitzer Prizes—including the 2016 Pulitzer for Public Service—six George Polk Awards, and 15 Overseas Press Club Awards.
Carroll is a fierce advocate for a robust independent press and a frequent speaker on the threats to journalistic access. She also is a leader on vital security issues for journalists working in hostile environments and was the first journalist ever to address the United Nations Security Council on the topic. She is a frequent contest judge and consultant on ethical and standards issues. From 2003 to 2012, she was a member of the Pulitzer Prize Board, the final year as co-chair. Before taking the top job at the AP, Carroll led the Knight Ridder Washington bureau and worked for the AP in Washington, Los Angeles, and Dallas. She was an editor at the International Herald Tribune and the San Jose Mercury News and a reporter at The Dallas Morning News in her hometown.
She is married to author Steve Twomey. They are the parents of an adult son.
Joel Simon
CPJ
See full bioJoel Simon
Executive Director, CPJ
Joel Simon has been executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists since 2006. He has led the organization through a period of expansion, notably in recent years, growing CPJ’s network of global correspondents, creating a new North America program focused on press freedom advocacy in the United States, and helping to develop an Emergencies Response Team focused on safety and direct assistance to journalists in crisis around the world.
Simon has participated in CPJ missions from Argentina to Zimbabwe. Under his leadership, CPJ has been honored with numerous awards, including the Thomas J. Dodd Prize in International Justice and Human Rights, a News & Documentary Emmy, and the 2018 Chatham House Prize, given for the most significant contribution to the improvement of international relations in the previous year.
Simon has written widely on press freedom issues for publications including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, and The Wall Street Journal. He is a regular columnist for the Columbia Journalism Review. Simon has appeared on international broadcasters including CNN, the BBC, NPR, FOX News, and Al Jazeera, and has participated in speeches and panels at places like the United Nations to the Newseum, and at academic institutions ranging from Stanford University to Beloit College.
Prior to joining CPJ in 1997 as Americas program coordinator, Simon worked for a decade as a freelance journalist in Latin America. He covered the Guatemalan civil war, the Zapatista uprising in Southern Mexico, the debate over the North American Free Trade Agreement, and the economic turmoil in Cuba following the collapse of the Soviet Union. A graduate of Amherst College and Stanford University, he is the author of Endangered Mexico: An Environment on the Edge (Sierra Club Books, 1997), The New Censorship: Inside the Global Battle for Media Freedom (Columbia University Press 2015); and We Want to Negotiate: The Secret World of Kidnapping, Hostages, and Ransom (Columbia Global Reports 2018).