Board Directors
Christiana Mbakwe-Medina
Christiana Mbakwe-Medina is an Emmy-nominated writer, journalist and cultural commentator. A South London native and graduate of Columbia Journalism School, she has spent the past 8 years living in the U.S. She has written for outlets such as the Baltimore Sun, Foreign Policy and Complex, and is working on her debut non-fiction book which explores how race, beauty and globalization intersect in unexpected ways. She is currently a staff writer for The Daily Show with Trevor Noah.
Dr. Wilneida Negrón
Dr. Wilneida Negrón specializes in developing and scaling new models for people-centered structural and systemic change in the technology sector, capital markets/finance, and labor markets. She most recently worked at the Ford Foundation, where she led cross-thematic area strategy development between the Gender, Race, Ethnic Justice, Technology and Society, Mission Investing, Future of Work(ers), and Civic Engagement Thematic areas. She is currently the Director of Policy and Research at Coworker.org and consultant with Transform Finance, an NGO working at the intersections of finance and social justice. She is a Data & Society Research Institute Fellow and Senior Atlantic Fellow for Racial Equity.
Ethar El-Katatney
Ethar El-Katatney is a digital newsroom manager and strategist with over fifteen years of international journalism experience working on news, features and investigative stories for print, online, and TV. She is currently the News Product Manager for the Americas at Bloomberg. Previously, she was the former Young Audiences Editor at The Wall Street Journal and the senior executive producer overseeing the AJ+ newsroom. A published author and an international award winning journalist, she’s been awarded a CNN African Journalist of the Year Award, a Samir Kassir Freedom of the Press Award, and an Anna Lindh Euro-Mediterranean Journalist Award. She has an MBA and an MA in Television and Digital Journalism from the American University in Cairo, and was part of the inaugural cohort of the Executive Program in News Innovation and Leadership at CUNY.
Josh Benson
Josh Benson is a partner at Old Town Media, a firm that works with publishers, news-related tech companies and journalism funders to maximize impact. At Old Town, he helped launch and incubate some of the most successful independent local publications in America, and he co-manages a fund that invests in news infrastructure. Previously, Josh reported and edited at the Peter Kaplan-era New York Observer and The New York Times before co-founding a publication called Capital New York, which was eventually acquired by Politico. He and his partners subsequently spearheaded Politico's successful, large-scale expansion into state and local coverage.
Michael J. Hirschhorn
Michael J. Hirschhorn is founder & CEO of mebl | Transforming Furniture. mebl develops educational resources for decision-makers in the furniture industry -- with the aim of accelerating its transition toward environmentally sustainable and circular design practices. Previously, from 2008 - 14, Michael served as Executive Director of the International Human Rights Funders Group, a global network of donors and grantmakers committed to advancing human rights. From 2003-08, Michael was Executive Director of the Coro New York Leadership Center in New York City; from 1995-2001, he served as Executive Director of the Literacy Assistance Center, also in NYC; and, prior, he was as an Assistant to the Chancellor of the NYC Public Schools and a Visiting Non-Profit Executive at the Yale School of Management. Michael plays leadership roles on the boards of a number of non-profit education, immigration, arts/design and human rights organizations and grantmaking institutions. He received his BA from Yale University and his MBA & MSW from Columbia University. Michael lives in Brooklyn, with his wife Jimena Martinez in a recently 'empty nest' of their 19-year-old twins.
