FREEDOM OF THE PRESS FOUNDATION - Key Persons
A. Adam Glenn is the deputy editor at Freedom of the Press Foundation. An award-winning journalist, he has worked for newspapers, magazines, and online newsrooms in New York and Washington, D.C., and consulted for an array of news publishers, think tanks, nonprofits, and governmental agencies. He recently served as writer/editor at the Knight First Amendment Institute and currently is consulting editorial director for the Society of Environmental Journalists. A longtime journalism trainer and educator, Glenn also teaches journalism at the City University of New York. He has won numerous fellowships, grants, and awards, and holds a master's degree in international environmental policy from The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and a bachelor's degree in journalism from Boston University. He lives in New York's Lower Hudson Valley.
Job Titles:
- Deputy Director of Audience at Freedom
Ahmed Zidan is the deputy director of audience at Freedom of the Press Foundation, where he oversees the organization's audience strategy, social media, and newsletters. Prior to joining FPF, he was the deputy director of digital and social media at the Committee to Protect Journalists, where he worked for six years. Before that, he was social media editor of Radio Netherlands Worldwide, and editor of ArabNet, which covers tech entrepreneurship. He was also the editor of Mideast Youth, a blogging collective that championed freedom of speech and expression in the Middle East and North Africa, and that won many awards, including the 2011 Best of Blogs Award from the German broadcaster Deutsche Welle. He also worked as a freelance fixer and interpreter for several media organizations following the 2011 Egyptian revolution, and as a freelance journalist for various digital and print outlets. Hailing from Cairo, Egypt, Ahmed is fluent in both English and Arabic. In a former life, he studied medicine at Cairo University, obtaining an MB BCh. You can find him on Twitter @zidanism. He currently resides in Brooklyn, New York.
Azmat Khan is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter whose work grapples with the human costs of war.
She is an investigative reporter with the New York Times Magazine and is the Patti Cadby Birch Assistant Professor at Columbia Journalism School, where she also directs the Simon and June Li Center for Global Journalism.
Khan's investigations from Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan have prompted widespread policy impact and won more than a dozen awards, including the Pulitzer Prize, two National Magazine Awards, two Overseas Press Club awards, the Polk Award, and the Hillman Prize.
Khan's multi-part series in the New York Times, The Civilian Casualty Files, was awarded the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in International Reporting. Based on more than five years of reporting by Khan, the series laid bare how America's campaign of so-called ‘precision strikes' has been marked by deeply flawed intelligence, rushed and often imprecise targeting, and the deaths of thousands of civilians, many of them children. Khan sued the Department of Defense to obtain and analyze a trove of more than 1,300 formerly secret military casualty assessments. She also visited the sites of more than 100 civilian casualty incidents in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan - often tracking down individuals from the records - and conducting scores of interviews with airstrike survivors, their families, military officials, and intelligence informants.
Bevyn Howard (she/her) is the grants manager at Freedom of the Press Foundation, where she prepares grant proposals and reports while helping keep donors informed on FPF's major projects and programs. She has a background in persuasive rhetorical writing with a deep passion for social justice and intersectional advocacy. In her free time, she enjoys running, cuddling with her cats, and tending to her obnoxious collection of plants. She resides in Houston, Texas.
Job Titles:
- Deputy Director of Advocacy at Freedom
Caitlin Vogus is the deputy director of advocacy at Freedom of the Press Foundation, where she works to defend and protect press freedoms, journalists, and whistleblowers. Prior to FPF, Caitlin was the deputy director of the Free Expression Project at the Center for Democracy & Technology, a senior staff attorney at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, an attorney advisor at the Federal Communications Commission, and a law clerk at the Virginia Court of Appeals. Caitlin received her J.D. from Harvard Law School and bachelor's degree from the University of Virginia, where she was a student journalist. Caitlin is based in Washington, D.C.
Job Titles:
- Senior Software Engineer
- Senior Software Engineer at Freedom
Cameron Higby-Naquin is a senior software engineer at Freedom of the Press Foundation. He works on the web development team building and maintaining the organization's web projects. He believes in the open web, free software, and that technology can solve problems in the world and in our everyday lives. He has witnessed the rise and fall of a great number of trends in the design and construction of websites, and in spite of this continues to think building them is a good idea. He resides in Vermont, where he enjoys music, dance, and the outdoors.
Chris Porras (he/him) is the director of HR, talent and culture at Freedom of the Press Foundation, where he leads initiatives that build and sustain a cohesive organizational culture. Chris' professional background includes Tribeca Enterprises (which owns and operates the Tribeca Festival) and the Manhattan District Attorney's Office. He's also volunteered as a mentor at Big Brothers Big Sisters of NYC and through UStrive, and as a kitchen supervisor at New Alternatives for LGBTQ+ Homeless Youth. Chris is passionate about media in all its forms, making people laugh, and nurturing burgeoning talent.
Cory Myers (he/him) is a senior software engineer on the SecureDrop team at Freedom of the Press Foundation. He studied philosophy at Deep Springs College and Yale College, where he was an undergraduate fellow at Yale Law School's Information Society Project. In 2023-2024, he is an Internet of Rights fellow with ARTICLE 19, focusing on anti-censorship advocacy within the Internet Engineering Task Force. He also serves on the board of the Telluride Association, a nonprofit that runs transformative educational experiences rooted in critical thinking and democratic community. He lives in the Pacific Northwest.
Daniel Ellsberg co-founded Freedom of the Press Foundation. He was best known as the whistleblower who gave the Pentagon Papers to The New York Times in 1971. Ellsberg was also the author of three books: Papers on the War (1971), Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers (2002), and Risk, Ambiguity and Decision (2001). In December 2006, he won the Right Livelihood Award, known as the "Alternative Nobel Prize," in Stockholm, Sweden, "for putting peace and truth first, at considerable personal risk, and dedicating his life to inspiring others to follow his example."
Job Titles:
- Senior Digital Security Trainer at Freedom
David Huerta is a senior digital security trainer at Freedom of the Press Foundation, where he trains journalists in privacy-enhancing technology to empower a free press. He's taught hundreds of trainings across the world and has previously organized the digital security track at the National Association of Hispanic Journalists conference. He's also spoken on the subject of usable privacy technology at DEF CON, Radical Networks, RightsCon, FACETS, Allied Media Conference, and anywhere the words "use PGP" summon him to a stump speech.
Job Titles:
- Senior Digital Security Trainer at Freedom
Davis Erin Anderson (she/her) is a senior digital security trainer at Freedom of the Press Foundation. Davis has been training learners at all levels on concepts in digital security and data privacy since 2016. In addition to crafting fun and engaging hands-on workshops, she has produced training videos and online tutorials for those interested in keeping their data safe. Past projects include NYC Digital Safety, Data Privacy Project, and Web Literacy for Library Staff. In 2019, she helped secure funding to provide digital security and data privacy training to libraries and community-based organizations in advance of the 2020 U.S. Census.
Davis holds degrees in library science and music performance, and she performs regularly as a French horn player with orchestras and other ensembles in and around NYC.
Job Titles:
- Principal Researcher
- Principal Researcher at Freedom
Dr. Martin Shelton is the principal researcher at Freedom of the Press Foundation, conducting user research on harassment of journalists and digital security education in J-schools. He also leads security editorial and the U.S. J-school digital security curriculum.
As a UX researcher, he previously worked with Google Chrome and the Coral Project at The New York Times, where he learned from journalists and at-risk groups about their security concerns. In a former life, he was a disaffected academic and earned his Ph.D. at the University of California at Irvine.
Edward Snowden is a former intelligence officer who served the CIA, NSA, and DIA for nearly a decade as a subject matter expert on technology and cybersecurity. In 2013, he revealed the NSA was unconstitutionally seizing the private records of billions of individuals who had not been suspected of any wrongdoing, resulting in the largest debate about reforms to US surveillance policy since 1978. He has received awards for courage, integrity, and public service, and was named the top global thinker of 2013 by Foreign Policy magazine. Today, he works on methods of enforcing human rights through the application and development of new technologies. He joined the board of Freedom of the Press Foundation in February 2014 and served as board president from 2016 to 2022.
Job Titles:
- Vice President of Engineering at Freedom
Erik is the vice president of engineering at Freedom of the Press Foundation. Prior to joining FPF, Erik worked on many free and open projects. Chief among them was the Wikimedia Foundation, where he was a volunteer, board member, and executive, and helped build the organization into the free culture powerhouse it is today. Erik has also worked as a journalist and author, project manager, public speaker, and software engineer. He lives in Portland, Oregon, and enjoys hiking, reading, and building alternatives to proprietary tech platforms.
Job Titles:
- Office Manager
- Operations Assistant
Grace Samaritano (she/they) is the operations assistant/office manager for Freedom of the Press Foundation. Grace studied Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at New York University and has previously worked at nonprofits advocating for New York's immigrant population. Grace resides in Brooklyn, New York, and enjoys bird-watching, music, and spending time with her cat.
Job Titles:
- Chief Information Security Officer and Director of Digital Security at Freedom
Harlo Holmes is the chief information security officer and director of digital security at Freedom of the Press Foundation. She strives to help individual journalists in various media organizations become confident and effective in securing their communications within their newsrooms, with their sources, and with the public at large. She is a media scholar, software programmer, and activist. Harlo was a regular contributor to the open source mobile security collective Guardian Project, where she spearheaded the media metadata verification initiative currently empowering ProofMode, Save by OpenArchive, eyeWitness to Atrocities, and others.
Harris Lapiroff is the engineering manager (web, Dangerzone) at Freedom of the Press Foundation, overseeing the design and technical details of web projects. Previously, Harris was co-founder of a worker-cooperative web development agency that developed nonprofit and social good websites in a variety of fields. He lives in Somerville, Massachusetts.
Job Titles:
- Director
- Producer
- Actor, Director
John Cusack is an actor, director, producer, and screenwriter who has appeared in over 60 films. He's also a political activist and regularly speaks out and writes on issues of human rights, government transparency, and accountability-amongst other things.
John Perry Barlow was a co-founder of the Freedom of the Press Foundation. He was also a retired Wyoming rancher (and native), a former lyricist for the Grateful Dead, and the co-founder and board member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil liberties organization which has been protecting the free flow of information on the Internet since 1990. He was a founding Fellow at Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet and Society. He wrote about cyberspace since 1988 and was first to apply that name to the global social space it presently describes. Barlow's piece on the future of copyright, "The Economy of Ideas," is taught in many law schools, and his "Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace" is posted on thousands of websites. The Guardian named him one of the twenty most influential champions of the Open Internet. He was the father of three daughters and his primary aspiration was to be a good ancestor. He dreamed of a world where all general useful knowledge can be available to anyone, of any station, merely for the price of curiosity.
Katie Drummond is an award-winning journalist and newsroom leader who is currently the global editorial director at WIRED. Prior to joining WIRED in 2023, she ran VICE's digital reporting, video, and audience development teams around the world; during her tenure, VICE expanded its news operations and investigative reporting efforts across Latin America, Europe, and Asia, in an ambitious effort that Drummond spearheaded and led. Her teams at VICE were honored with dozens of major journalism prizes, including several Emmys, Online Journalism Awards, Society Of Publishers in Asia Awards, and a Peabody Award, among other plaudits.
Drummond was previously the editor-in-chief of Gizmodo, and served in key leadership roles at Bloomberg and The Verge, among other outlets. She started her career as a reporter, covering national security for WIRED during the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Job Titles:
- Engineering Manager for the SecureDrop Team at Freedom
Kevin is the engineering manager for the SecureDrop team at Freedom of the Press Foundation. His involvement in digital security stems from his time spent working in various roles with media organizations including the Canadian Broadcasting Company and The Globe And Mail, where he led security workshops for journalists, and worked with FPF to implement the first Canadian SecureDrop instance. Kevin is based in Toronto, Canada.
Job Titles:
- Vice President of Editorial
Kirstin is the vice president of editorial for Freedom of the Press Foundation, overseeing the organization's editorial strategy and standards. She's also managing editor of the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, a project documenting press freedom violations in the United States. X, formerly known as Twitter: @TrackerKK
Job Titles:
- Senior Software Engineer
- Senior Software Engineer at Freedom
Kunal Mehta is a senior software engineer at Freedom of the Press Foundation. He previously worked at the Wikimedia Foundation, where he served as a core developer for MediaWiki, among other roles. He's a strong believer in the free knowledge and software movements, spending free time editing Wikipedia and contributing to the Debian Project. Having earned a degree in journalism from San José State University, Kunal is blending his interests in First Amendment rights and free software by working on SecureDrop.
Laura Poitras is a filmmaker and journalist. Her film CITIZENFOUR, the third installment of her post-9/11 Trilogy, won an Academy Award for Best Documentary, along with awards from the British Academy of Film, Independent Spirit Awards, Director's Guild of America, and Emmy Awards.
Her reporting on NSA mass surveillance shared in the 2014 Pulitzer Prize Public Service. She has been on a U.S. government secret watch list since 2006. In 2015, the Electronic Frontier Foundation filed a FOIA lawsuit against the U.S. government to obtain her FBI files.
In 2016, she had her first solo museum exhibition at the Whitney Museum. Laura is the recipient of a 2012 MacArthur Fellowship, and is the co-creator and executive producer of Field of Vision.
Job Titles:
- Vice President of Development and Operations
- Vice President of Development and Operations at Freedom
Louise Black is the vice president of development and operations at Freedom of the Press Foundation, where she oversees the organization's fundraising goals and day-to-day operations. She has a rich background in progressive activism and previously worked as the deputy director of major gifts and events at People For the American Way in Washington, D.C. Louise also received a graduate certificate in nonprofit management from the George Washington University in 2017 and a graduate certificate in nonprofit financial stewardship from the Harvard Kennedy School in 2022. She resides in Brooklyn, New York.
Maeve (she/they) is a senior site reliability engineer at Freedom of the Press Foundation. She has previously held roles ranging from managing technology at a neuroscience lab to building out and maintaining infrastructure for a multibillion-dollar political fundraising platform. In a former life, she was a developer on the Debian Project. In her spare time, she enjoys cooking, studying Mandarin, discovering new music, and getting trapped by her two cats every time she sits down. She is passionate about making technology more inclusive and has been an assistant instructor at many events aimed at bringing underrepresented groups into application development.
Nathan Dyer is the newsroom support engineer for Freedom of the Press Foundation. His previous work includes providing customer support for a Linux-focused hardware vendor, as well as being an AP computer science instructor and managing a 1:1 technology deployment for a public school district. He is a proponent of free and open source software, and actively maintains multiple open source apps for the Linux desktop. He lives with his wife in Tennessee.
Rainey Reitman serves as president of the board of Freedom of the Press Foundation. She worked for the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) for 11 years, first as their Activism Director and then as their Chief Program Officer. Rainey also co-founded and served for six years as a steering committee member of the Chelsea Manning Support Network. She currently serves as a board member for the Filecoin Foundation for the Decentralized Web and runs a nonprofit consulting service called Groundwork Strategy.
Rainey's advocacy has focused on defending the rights of whistleblowers, fighting mass government surveillance, and investigating how limiting access to financial services has been used to silence speakers. Among other projects, she played a key organizing role in projects such as the Tor Challenge, the SOPA blackouts, the Stop Watching Us coalition and their Rally Against Mass Surveillance, flying a protest blimp over the NSA data center in Utah, the Who Has Your Back reports comparing corporate policies about government access to user data, and producing EFF's podcast, How to Fix the Internet.
Ryan Rice is a membership coordinator for Freedom of the Press Foundation. Combining an academic background in political science with the practical education of social justice movement building, Ryan has worked previously in rights for the unhoused, foreclosure defense, and nuclear disarmament. They are thrilled to have found a way to help whistleblowers, journalists, and free press advocates with their current work.
Job Titles:
- Director of Advocacy at Freedom
Seth Stern is the director of advocacy at Freedom of the Press Foundation. He oversees FPF's efforts to defend press freedoms and stand up for journalists and whistleblowers who have been denied their rights. Prior to joining FPF, Seth practiced media and First Amendment law in Chicago for over a decade. Before that, he worked as a reporter and editor in the Chicago and Atlanta areas. He lives in Evanston, Illinois.
Job Titles:
- Research Reporter for the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker
Sophie Hagen is the research reporter for the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, the canonical news database documenting press freedom violations in the United States. She researches and helps document assaults on journalists, legal orders for their work product and source information, and other violations. She has worked as a writer and editor in book and magazine publishing, and as a paralegal helping workers recover lost wages. She is passionate about press freedom and privacy, and resisting surveillance. She is from Brooklyn, New York.
Job Titles:
- Senior Reporter for the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker
Stephanie Sugars is the senior reporter for the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker. She documents press freedom violations in the U.S. and by U.S. officials abroad. A graduate of NYU's Global and Joint Program Studies program in journalism and international relations, her professional work focuses on human rights, politics, and identity-targeted violence. She has previously worked at the Committee to Protect Journalists and the Post-Conflict Research Center, and her freelance reporting has appeared in Al Jazeera, openDemocracy, Muftah Magazine, Civic Ideas, and Balkan Diskurs.
Trevor Timm is a co-founder and the executive director of Freedom of the Press Foundation. He is a journalist, activist, and legal analyst whose writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, USA Today, The Atlantic, Al Jazeera, Foreign Policy, Harvard Law & Policy Review, and Politico.
Trevor formerly worked as an activist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Before that, he helped the longtime general counsel of The New York Times, James Goodale, write a book on the Pentagon Papers and the First Amendment. He received his J.D. from New York Law School.
In 2013, he received the Hugh Hefner First Amendment Award for journalism.
Job Titles:
- Pulitzer Prize - Winning Journalist
Wesley Lowery is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author and correspondent for CBS News. Lowery was previously a national correspondent at the Washington Post, specializing in issues of race and law enforcement. He led the team awarded the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting in 2016 for the creation and analysis of a real-time database to track fatal police shootings in the United States. His most recent project, Murder With Impunity, an unprecedented look at unsolved homicides in major American cities, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2019. His first book, They Can't Kill Us All: Ferguson, Baltimore and a New Era in America's Racial Justice Movement, was a New York Times bestseller and was awarded the Christopher Isherwood Prize for Autobiographical Prose by the LA Times Book Prizes.