Mother Jones Announces Five New Board Members

The new additions include leaders across media, philanthropy, and law, and mark a significant shift in the organization’s future.

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Today, Mother Jones announces five new members to its board of directors. The expansion is the culmination of an in-depth reenvisioning of board service for the nonprofit organization and Magazine of the Year winner, undertaken over several years.

The new members, who joined the board over the past 14 months, include author, activist, and founder of Decolonizing Wealth Project and of Liberated Capital Edgar Villanueva; writer and activist Rinku Sen, the former president and executive director of Race Forward; digital media and communications executive Bích Ngọc Cao; founder and managing partner of The 360 Group Vincent Robinson, a strategic consultant for social sector organizations; and Cardozo School of Law professor and criminal justice expert Ekow N. Yankah.

These new board members signify the nonprofit newsroom’s investment in diversifying its leadership to better serve its readers. “We’re thrilled to welcome these new members. They bring new talents and diverse backgrounds to the organization at a time when fearless, independent reporting is more important than ever,” says Mother Jones Board Chair Phil Straus.

“The new members bring critical expertise and leadership in fields that our reporting focuses on, and they represent the diversity of audiences we serve,” says CEO Monika Bauerlein. “Like Mother Jones readers across the board, they are changemakers, and I look forward to raising hell together.”

The new members join an active, committed group of leaders on the Mother Jones board of directors. Unusual for nonprofit governance, the Mother Jones board of directors also includes two voting representatives elected by the organization’s staff.

A full list of the board can be found here.

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AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

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AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

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