Six respected figures from journalism, technology and academia join the Reuters Institute’s Advisory Board

Six leading practitioners and professionals are joining the Reuters Institute’s Advisory Board. Hailing from El Salvador, India, Finland, Nepal, the UK and the US, the new members reflect the global nature of the Institute and its unflinching commitment to exploring the future of the news industry with the help of voices who were often excluded from these debates in the past.

The new members include executives from foundations focused on journalism and technology, a prominent British journalist who’s now part of academia, and several editors from countries where the profession is practised from exile or under pressure. They will replace members who’ve served on the board for several years and been noteworthy contributors and thinkers around the future of journalism worldwide.

The Reuters Institute’s Advisory Board meets once a year on the day of the Reuters Memorial Lecture and is chaired by the University of Oxford’s Chancellor, the Rt Hon The Lord Hague of Richmond. The board provides general input and suggestions for the Institute’s work, and includes high-profile figures from journalism, technology and academia.

Here are the names of six new members of the Institute’s Advisory Board along with their short biographies:

Carlos Dada 

Carlos Dada is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of El Faro, one of Latin America’s most renowned media organisations. He is an investigative reporter and a nonfiction writer. His book Los Pliegues de la Cintura is a series of long stories on violence, organised crime and its effects on Central American people.

He has been named World Press Freedom Hero by the International Press Institute, and is a recipient, among other distinctions, of the Maria Moors Cabot Award by Columbia University and the Trailblazer Award by the International Center for Journalists. Today he and his newsroom are in exile, facing the enormous challenge of telling the story while away.

Anup Kaphle 

Anup Kaphle is Group Editorial Director of Kantipur Media Group, Nepal’s largest news organisation. He previously served as editor-in-chief of Rest of World, a nonprofit newsroom he helped launch in 2020 to cover technology’s impact in emerging markets.

Before joining Rest of World, Anup was editor-in-chief of The Kathmandu Post, Nepal’s leading English-language daily. Earlier in his career, he spent a decade in US newsrooms covering international affairs and national security. Newsrooms he’s led have won the National Magazine Award, the Edward R. Murrow Award, and the James Beard Award.

Laura Saarikoski

Laura Saarikoski is the CEO of the Helsingin Sanomat Media Foundation, which supports media research, quality journalism and freedom of speech. Previously, she was an editor-in-chief and an award-winning US Correspondent at the Helsingin Sanomat, the leading newspaper of Finland. As a professor of practice at the Tampere University, she co-authored a piece of research in 2026 about AI use in media.

In 2011–12 Saarikoski was a Journalist Fellow at the Reuters Institute, where she worked on a project on how to lead journalists in the digital age.

Supriya Sharma

Supriya Sharma is the Executive Editor of Scroll, one of India’s most respected independent news outlets. In a career spanning over two decades, she has travelled across the length and breadth of the country, covering politics, development and conflict.

Before joining Scroll, she was previously a reporter with NDTV and The Times of India, two of India’s largest media organisations. She has won several awards, including two Ramnath Goenka awards, a Red Ink award for political reporting, and the Chameli Devi Award for Outstanding Woman Journalist. In 2011–12 she was a Journalist Fellow at the Reuters Institute, where she worked on a project on the news coverage of peaceful protests in India.

Nabiha Syed

Nabiha Syed is the Executive Director of the Mozilla Foundation, where she leads strategic initiatives across programmes, products and investments. Before joining the foundation, she was the CEO of The Markup, an award-winning journalism non-profit that challenges technology to serve the public good. Under her leadership, The Markup’s unique approach won a national Murrow Award and a Loeb Award, and was recognised as “Most Innovative” by Fast Company in 2022.

Prior to The Markup, Syed worked as a media lawyer with a legal career spanning private practice and the New York Times First Amendment Fellowship. She led BuzzFeed’s libel and news-gathering matters, including the successful defence of several high-profile libel lawsuits. Syed sits on the boards of the Scott Trust and the Mellon Foundation.

Gary Younge

Gary Younge is an award-winning author, broadcaster and a Professor of Sociology at the University of Manchester. Formerly editor-at-large at the Guardian, he has written seven books, most recently Pigeonholed: Creative Freedom as an Act of Resistance.

Winner of the 2023 Orwell Prize for Journalism and the 2025 Robert B. Silvers Prize for Journalism, Younge has written for the New York Review of Books, Granta, GQ and The New Statesman, among others, and made radio and television documentaries on subjects ranging from gay marriage to Brexit. His fifth book, Another Day in the Death of America, won the J. Anthony Lukas Prize. 

In response to the announcement, the Reuters Institute’s Director, Mitali Mukherjee, said: “The Reuters Institute is strengthened by and learns from its community. Our goal is to address issues that matter for working journalists and news media around the world. I am delighted to have such an international group of both vanguards and veterans to help us understand how our work can help journalism adapt to a rapidly changing world.”