Katherine Maher

Notable work and positions

National Public Radio — President and Chief Executive Officer (March 2024– )
Web Summit — Chief Executive Officer (October 2023–March 2024)
Wikimedia Foundation — Chief Executive Officer and Executive Director (2016–2021)
Signal Foundation — Chair, Board of Directors

Biography

Katherine Roberts Maher, born April 18, 1983, is president and CEO of National Public Radio, a position she began on March 25, 2024, succeeding John Lansing. Before NPR, she served as CEO of Web Summit, the technology conference company, from October 2023. She was CEO and executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that operates Wikipedia, from 2016 to 2021, after joining the foundation's communications team in 2014; during her tenure the foundation's endowment grew to roughly $140 million. Earlier in her career she worked at UNICEF, the National Democratic Institute, the World Bank, and Access Now. She chairs the board of the Signal Foundation, which operates the Signal messaging app, and is a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations. In March 2025, Maher testified before a U.S. House subcommittee hearing titled “Anti-American Airwaves: Holding the Heads of NPR and PBS Accountable” regarding allegations of bias at NPR; Congress subsequently rescinded funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which provides some federal funding to NPR and its member stations. At a 2021 Atlantic Council summit, Maher, then Wikimedia CEO, described the foundation's approach to identifying election- and pandemic-related misinformation as including “conversations with government” and other platform operators; the remarks drew renewed scrutiny after her NPR appointment. Maher received the National Press Foundation's W.M. Kiplinger Distinguished Contributions to Journalism Award in 2025.