Katherine Maher is the Chief Executive Officer and the Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation and oversees the operations of the organisation and its professional staff. Originally from Connecticut, Maher has spent her career at the intersection of technology, human rights, democracy, and international development. Before joining the Foundation, she was the Advocacy Director for the international digital rights organisation Access in Washington, DC, where she worked on global policy issues related to freedom of expression, access to information, and privacy. Prior to Access, Maher was an Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Innovations Specialist at the World Bank; the ICT Program Officer at the National Democratic Institute; and the Innovation and Communication Officer at the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), where she was a founding member of the UNICEF Innovation team. She joined the Wikimedia Foundation in 2014 as the organisation’s first Chief Communications Officer. Maher received her bachelor’s degree in Middle Eastern and Islamic studies in 2005 from the New York University College of Arts & Sciences, after studying at the Arabic Language Institute of the American University in Cairo, Egypt, and Institut français d’études arabes de Damas (L’IFEAD) in Damascus, Syria. Maher is a fellow at the Truman National Security Project, and her writings on human rights, technology, and foreign policy have appeared in various publications, including the book ‘State Power 2.0’ and the periodicals Foreign Policy, The Atlantic, and The Guardian. She is a member of the Advisory Council of the Open Technology Fund and the board of the Sunlight Foundation.