President and CEO |Knight Foundation

Maribel Perez Wadsworth runs the news division of Gannett Media, overseeing more than 5,000 journalists across 260 local news organizations and the flagship USA TODAY. She has been with Gannett for nearly 25 years, beginning as a reporter at the Rockford (Ill.) Register Star. In 2015, she was named Gannett’s first Chief Strategy and Transformation Officer at which time she created its Innovation Lab to foster intrapreneurship and human-centered design across the organization. In 2016 U.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker appointed Wadsworth to a two-year term on the National Advisory Council on Innovation and Entrepreneurship. She currently serves on the board of directors of the News Media Alliance and the International News Media Association.