The Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy is pleased to announce the addition of Kathleen Carroll, Katie Couric, Norm Pearlstine, Ben Sherwood, and Nabiha Syed to its Advisory Board. As the newest members of the Center’s Advisory board, they will provide insights and guidance in support of the Shorenstein Center’s mission to provide solutions to the large-scale problems facing our information ecosystem.
“As the Center navigates this inflection point in modern media, we feel very fortunate to be able to seek the counsel of some of the brightest minds in the industry,” said Shorenstein Director and Edward R. Murrow Professor of Practice Nancy Gibbs.
Existing members of the Center’s Advisory Board include Boston Globe Media Partners CEO Linda Henry, former Washington Post executive editor Marty Baron, Harvard Business School Adjunct Professor Emeritus and Board Chair William Poorvu, and other prominent leaders in journalism, academia, and policy.
Read more about the Shorenstein Center’s newest Advisory Board members below:
Kathleen Carroll is a veteran journalism leader and press freedom advocate. From 2017 to 2023, she chaired the board of the Committee to Protect Journalists, a global organization that helps endangered journalists and advocates for press freedoms. 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. Today, she chairs the board of Montclair Local, a startup nonprofit news organization in New Jersey. 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 last year as co-chair, and has served on the advisory board of the Edmond & Lily Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard. Before taking the top job at 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.
Katie Couric is an award-winning journalist and #1 New York Times best-selling author of her memoir, Going There, which was published in October 2021. She is also a co-founder of Stand Up To Cancer (SU2C). Since its launch in 2008, Stand Up To Cancer has raised more than $700 million to support cutting-edge collaborative science and its research has contributed to nine new FDA approved therapies. In 2017, she founded Katie Couric Media (KCM), which has developed a number of media projects, including a daily newsletter, a podcast, digital video series and several documentaries. KCM works with purpose-driven brands to create premium content that addresses important social issues like gender equality, environmental sustainability and mental health. Couric was the first woman to solo anchor a network evening newscast, serving as anchor and managing editor of the CBS Evening News from 2006 to 2011 following 15-years as co-anchor of NBC’s Today show. She also hosted a syndicated show and served as the Yahoo Global News Anchor until 2017. She has won a duPont-Columbia Award, a Peabody Award, two Edward R. Murrow Awards, a Walter Cronkite Award, and multiple Emmys. She was twice named one of TIME magazine’s 100 most influential people and was a Glamour magazine woman of the year three times. She has also received numerous awards for her cancer advocacy work; honored by both the Harvard and Columbia schools of public health, the American Cancer Society and The American Association of Cancer Researchers. In addition to Going There, Couric is also the author of two children’s books and The Best Advice I Ever Got: Lessons from Extraordinary Lives.
Norman Pearlstine is an American journalist and media executive who was Managing Editor of The Wall Street Journal, an Executive Editor of Forbes, Editor in Chief and then Chief Content Officer of Time Inc., Chief Content Officer of Bloomberg L.P., and Executive Editor of the Los Angeles Times. He now serves on the board of Blue Ocean, a special purpose acquisition company; on the advisory boards of North Base Media in the U.S., and Majarra, an Abu Dhabi company that translates technical and business publications into Arabic. In addition to the Shorenstein Center, he serves on three nonprofit boards: the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press (RCFP); the Center for Communication, Leadership and Policy (CCLP) at U.S.C. Annenberg; and The Alliance for Trust in Media. Pearlstine is writing a book about The Pacific Century and is the author of OFF THE RECORD: The Press, the Government, and the War over Anonymous Sources (2007, FSG).
Ben Sherwood is a storyteller, journalist, media executive and entrepreneur. Newly named publisher and CEO of the Daily Beast, Sherwood was previously the founder and CEO of MOJO, a venture-backed start-up in the youth sports space. In December 2023, MOJO was sold to TeamSnap, the #1 tech platform in youth sports. Sherwood now serves on the TeamSnap board. From 2014 to 2019, Sherwood served as Co-Chairman of Disney Media Networks and President of Disney|ABC Television Group. In that capacity, he was co-chair of the Hulu and AETN (A+E Networks) Boards. An award-winning journalist, Sherwood was president of ABC News from 2010 to 2014, overseeing a historic transformation of the organization and a period of record-breaking journalistic and financial success. Over his career, including his role as executive producer of Good Morning America, Sherwood led his teams to win some 80 Emmys, 35 Edward R. Murrow Awards and 10 Peabody Awards. Sherwood started his career in journalism as a college intern at the Los Angeles Times, CBS News and The News and Observer (Raleigh). Over the years, Sherwood’s non-fiction essays have appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times. He is also the author of four critically-acclaimed best-selling books (The Survivors Club; The Man Who Ate the 747; The Death and Life of Charlie St Cloud; and Red Mercury). He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard College and was a Rhodes Scholar at Magdalen College, Oxford, where he received master’s degrees in British imperial history and development economics.
Nabiha Syed is the chief executive officer of The Markup, an award-winning journalism nonprofit that challenges technology to serve the public good. Under her leadership, The Markup’s unique approach has been referenced by Congress 21 times, inspired dozens of class action lawsuits, won a national Murrow Award and a Loeb Award, and been recognized as “Most Innovative” by FastCompany in 2022. Before launching The Markup in 2020, Syed spent a decade as an acclaimed media lawyer focused on the intersection of frontier technology and newsgathering, including advising on publication issues with the Snowden revelations and the Steele Dossier, access litigation around police disciplinary records, as well as privacy and free speech issues globally. Described by Forbes as “one of the best emerging free speech lawyers,” she has briefed two presidents on free speech in the digital age, delivered the Salant Lecture at Harvard, headlined SXSW to discuss data privacy after Roe v. Wade, and was awarded the NAACP/Archewell Digital Civil Rights award in 2023 for her work. A California native and daughter of Pakistani immigrants, Syed holds a J.D. from Yale Law School, where she co-founded one of the nation’s first media law clinics, a B.A. from Johns Hopkins University, and a law degree from Oxford, which she attended as a Marshall Scholar. She serves on the boards of the New York Civil Liberties Union, The New Press, and the Scott Trust, among others.
