SOA’s mission is to address key areas to attain fundamental, systemic change, and ensure the full participation in the STEMM workforce to meet the increasing performance and innovation demands required to keep the U.S. competitive.

As an SOA partner, Wiki Education will help enact a community-developed national strategy to accelerate scientific excellence to power progress, innovation, and prosperity for all by 2050. In alignment with our work, Wiki Education will bolster the SOA’s national strategy’s Discovery pillar to help create opportunity for all in higher education. 

In 2024 alone, our Wikipedia Student Program supported 336 STEMM courses that taught Wikipedia editing to 6,298 students in higher education classrooms, including 57 courses at Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Hispanic-Serving Institutions, and Tribal Colleges and Universities. In 2025, we plan to support Wikipedia editing assignments for 7,000 higher education students across 375 STEMM courses, including 65 courses at these diverse institutions, to create more inclusive and accessible STEMM programming for all.

Wiki Education also committed to helping achieve the SOA’s national strategy’s Capstone goals on Strategic Communications, including to:

• Ensure that STEMM professionals depicted in entertainment and media are reflective of the country’s population.
• Effectively illustrate the importance of different perspectives in STEMM and how they are critical to achieving excellence in STEMM.

Throughout 2024, university and college students created 113 biographies of historically excluded STEMM professionals on Wikipedia, raising their visibility in the media. In 2025, we will train 200 students to improve 150 biographies on Wikipedia of historically excluded STEMM professionals to inspire excellence and diverse perspectives in the STEMM fields.

SOA will assist Wiki Education in meeting these goals by providing access to a resource library, funding opportunities, and programming to engage directly with other partners and their communities, as well as forums for planning and implementing the national strategy for equity and excellence. 

In collaboration with SOA partners, Wiki Education will help reimagine and transform the existing STEMM ecosystem to better support the aspirations of untapped talent in this country.

Visit teach.wikiedu.org to learn more about the free resources, digital tools, and staff support that Wiki Education offers to postsecondary instructors in the United States and Canada. 

Visit learn.wikiedu.org to explore our editing courses for subject matter experts.

“The sheer number of eyeballs looking to Wikipedia for health-related information is staggering,” said committee lead Amin Azzam, MD. “Helping health professions school faculty to implement Wikipedia editing assignments into their local contexts is far more impactful than my direct teaching of my own students. Getting this information on Wikipedia will help everyone who reads Wikipedia for their own or their loved ones’ health.”

During their two-year term, committee members will collaborate with Wiki Education across key areas of the project, including outreach and recruitment. Working with Wiki Education staff, the scholars will expand faculty awareness of the Wikipedia assignment through outreach to health professions networks, partnership development with organizations and institutions, and support for Teaching with Wikipedia webinars.

“Ever since taking a Wikipedia-editing course as a medical student, I’ve been passionate about improving health-related content on Wikipedia; whether through designing courses or encouraging colleagues to get involved,” said second-year ophthalmology resident Tolga Guven, MD. “I firmly believe in the open-access movement and that motivation should be the only barrier to acquiring knowledge. The opportunity to work alongside and learn from like-minded educators while helping improve one of the world’s most-referenced information sources was one I couldn’t resist.”

The group will also assist with a study led by Azzam to investigate the impact that editing Wikipedia has on health professions student editors. Committee members will support survey design and focus group framework development.

“This work excites me for two main reasons: one, the educational opportunity it presents for health professional students; and two, its potential to improve public health,” explained Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s Sheila Kusnoor, PhD. “Participating in Wikipedia editing courses gives students the chance to learn how to identify high-quality evidence and clearly communicate it to a lay audience. These skills are critical, as patients need access to reliable, easy-to-understand health information to make informed decisions about their care. Enhancing the quality of health information on Wikipedia can help empower patients with the knowledge needed to improve their health.” 

2025 Medical Community Advisory Committee members:

Mohammad Aldalou, MD is a postdoctoral scholar at the Marnix E. Heersink School of Medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB). In 2021, he founded OMEN-Palestine, the Palestinian chapter affiliated with Osmosis from Elsevier, where he led efforts to expand access to medical education resources for students and early-career physicians in the region. He also served as a regional lead and consultant with Osmosis from Elsevier, focusing on competency development and student engagement within the medical education program. At UAB, Dr. Aldalou’s research centers on formative assessment and competency-based medical education. His research interest lies in leveraging learning analytics to track student progress and inform the design of more effective and personalized educational experiences.

Amin Azzam, MD is a passionate health professions educator-innovator. He loves leveraging technologies that maximize learners’ capacities to become the awesome health professionals we all want in society. He is a professor at three San Francisco Bay Area universities: University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine; University of California, Berkeley School of Public Health; and Samuel Merritt University. He’s also a consultant to several health education technology companies.

Tanya Cupino, MD, PhD is a recent graduate of Loma Linda University. She has a PhD in microbiology and molecular genetics and a professional interest in adult patients with rare genetic conditions. In 2019, while still in medical school, she volunteered to participate in an international, asynchronous Wikipedia editing course that was sponsored by the medical learning platform Osmosis. After learning how to edit Wikipedia, Dr. Cupino collaborated with Dr. Guven and Dr. Azzam in designing an online course that teaches healthcare students how to improve the health content on Wikipedia. Dr. Cupino contributed to peer-reviewed publications that explore the multifactorial value-added outcomes in teaching healthcare professional students to edit Wikipedia, and has presented similar findings at research conferences. She is passionate about supporting any efforts to ensure trustworthy, approachable, fact-based resources that patients can freely access when they have questions about health concerns.

Scott Ewing, DO is an Interventional Cardiologist and medical educator in Fort Worth, Texas. Previously, he was a mechanical engineering manager at Texas Instruments in Dallas, Texas. He is board-certified in internal medicine, general cardiology, and interventional cardiology. He is an Assistant Professor and clinical preceptor at the Burnett School of Medicine at TCU. Additionally, he is an Assistant Professor at the University of North Texas Health Science Center Texas College of Osteopathic Medicine, where he teaches several cardiology classes, serves as 3rd-year Internal Medicine clerkship director, and teaches the TCOM WikiMed class twice yearly.

Tolga Guven, MD is a second-year ophthalmology resident in the U.K. and currently works as the Simulation Fellow for the Wessex Deanery where he is responsible for coordinating the surgical simulation education for the other residents in the region. As part of this fellowship, he is undertaking a PGCert in Healthcare Education. Dr. Guven previously served as a Histology and Embryology Lector at Charles University from 2017-2020, where his passion to make complex medical information more understandable and accessible began. Following on from this experience, he collaborated with Dr. Azzam on designing an online Wikipedia-editing course for healthcare students, which aims to improve the quality and accuracy of medical information available to the public. Dr. Guven brings a unique perspective to medical education, coming from a niche clinical specialty, with a commitment to accessible knowledge dissemination.

Sheila Kusnoor, PhD is a Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Biomedical Informatics at Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) and holds roles as Senior Information Scientist and Associate Director for Research at the Center for Knowledge Management (CKM). Dr. Kusnoor earned her Ph.D. in cellular and molecular neuroscience from Vanderbilt University. She began her career at CKM as a Knowledge Management Fellow in Personalized Medicine, aiming to cultivate expertise in informatics and information science. In her current role, Dr. Kusnoor leads and supports a variety of projects to advance VUMC priorities, applying expertise in knowledge management and informatics. Dr. Kusnoor is the course director for the WikiMed advanced elective, which teaches third- and fourth-year medical students how to identify high quality evidence to enhance Wikipedia medicine articles.

Maureen Richards, PhD is an immunology and microbiology educator. She has been working with the Wikipedia Platform as a course director for the past 9 years and has run 7 courses with over 100 total students. She currently serves as the Assistant Dean of Medical Education and Evaluation and Associate Professor at the University of Illinois College of Medicine Rockford Campus. 

We encourage any interested instructor to visit teach.wikiedu.org to learn more about incorporating a Wikipedia assignment into their courses with Wiki Education’s free support and resources. 

This project is funded through a Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) Eugene Washington PCORI Engagement Award (EADI #38991).

Thanks to a new $410,000 strategic partnership grant from the WITH Foundation, Wiki Education will build upon our ongoing work to improve and expand Wikipedia’s coverage of healthcare for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities, filling in gaps for the benefit of all. This initiative and the work of the disability experts, advocates, and students it will bring to Wikipedia will help ensure more of this missing information is available – and that it’s presented in a more representative, equitable, and accurate way. 

“WITH Foundation is deeply gratified to expand our partnership with Wiki Education. Ensuring accurate healthcare information about adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities is paramount. Through our continued support of this effort, we are confident that this initiative will continue to empower individuals, families, and professionals with the knowledge they need to foster a more inclusive society and comprehensive healthcare for adults with I/DD.” – Ryan Easterly, Executive Director, WITH Foundation.

Over the next two years, Wiki Education will run a series of Wiki Scientists courses that will support more than 50 experts in intellectual and developmental disability (I/DD) healthcare, including adults with lived experience of I/DD. 

Through our Wikipedia Student Program, we’ll also support postsecondary faculty in disability-related fields as they incorporate Wikipedia assignments into their pedagogy. By engaging faculty scholars, we’ll connect their own expertise to the project and the research efforts of their students as they enhance Wikipedia articles on I/DD as part of their academic coursework.

Guided by Wiki Education’s curriculum, resources, and staff support, participants across both the Wiki Scientists courses and the Wikipedia Student Program will tackle gaps in Wikipedia’s coverage of disabilities and disability healthcare information. They’ll work to transform existing articles from short, underdeveloped “stubs” to more thorough and representative content, as well as to create new articles for disabilities and disability healthcare topics still missing on Wikipedia.

How to Get Involved

Learn how to contribute your expertise

Interested in bringing your own expertise or lived experience to these efforts to improve Wikipedia’s coverage of disabilities and disability healthcare? We invite you to register for our upcoming Wiki Scientists courses! Learn more and register today by visiting learn.wikiedu.org.

Incorporate a Wikipedia assignment into your course

Are you a postsecondary instructor in the U.S. or Canada teaching in a disability or disability healthcare field? Visit teach.wikiedu.org to get started with our free resources, digital tools, and staff support to incorporate a Wikipedia assignment into your courses.

Join our Speaker Series event (tomorrow!)

En“abling” Change: How Wiki Education is tackling disability on Wikipedia
Tuesday, April 22, 2025
11 am Pacific / 2 pm Eastern
Register for Zoom link

Panelists:

• Diana Boling, Xavier University School of Nursing
• Ryan Easterly, WITH Foundation
• Skylar Covich, Braille Institute of America
• Terri Hlava, Arizona State University School of Social Transformation

This edition of the Wiki Education Speaker Series will be moderated by Helaine Blumenthal, Senior Program Manager. We invite you to bring questions for our panelists!

As Chief Administration and Financial Officer, Jordan works directly with Senior Leadership to build budgets, create financial forecasts, and make strategic recommendations, ensuring financial sustainability for our organization. Having owned two financial firms and served over 500 businesses in the Bay Area and beyond, Jordan brings a wealth of knowledge to her new role. Before joining our staff, Jordan worked with Wiki Education in a consulting capacity since 2016.

Jordan holds a BFA from University of California, Santa Cruz, where she focused on Intermedia Arts with a particular interest in Political Theory courses. Throughout her career in finance, Jordan has applied her background in philosophy, ethics and the duty of the arts to cultivate her holistic perspective towards organizational goals.

In her off-time, you can find Jordan in beautiful natural spaces on or around water – she loves to kayak, sail, swim, and spend time on the beach. Jordan also enjoys opportunities to build community by lending her professional skills to small businesses and upstarts.

Kelly Doyle Kim joins Wiki Education as Project Manager: Digital Heritage, focusing on the 250 by 2026 Campaign in our Wiki Scholars & Scientists program. In recognition of the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States, this new initiative will improve Wikipedia’s depth and coverage of American history.  Kelly will work closely with our Scholars & Scientists team, the American Association for State and Local History, and other cultural heritage organizations and professionals throughout the project. 

With over a decade of experience in the Wikimedia and GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums) sectors, Kelly is deeply passionate about bridging gaps in the cultural narrative and ensuring that diverse voices are represented in the digital space.

Prior to joining Wiki Education, Kelly worked at the Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum, where she focused on addressing Wikipedia’s gender gap and amplifying the achievements of women in the US. She also previously served as Community Manager for Democratic Commons at mySociety, Wikimedian in Residence for Gender Equity at West Virginia University Libraries, and as an instructor in our Wiki Scholars & Scientists program.

Outside of work, Kelly enjoys exploring new restaurants, crafting pottery in her garage studio, and spending time at the local beaches of Charleston, South Carolina, where she lives with her husband and daughter.

“Contributing a biography of a diverse person in STEM to Wikipedia is a significant step towards addressing the underrepresentation of women and people of color on the platform. As a STEM major and a black woman, I find it empowering to see [these] individuals recognized for their contributions, as it validates the importance of diversity in these fields and provides role models for future generations, including myself.”

“Editing Wikipedia was life-changing.”

Two years ago, Wiki Education announced a grant from the Broadcom Foundation to bring historically excluded figures in STEM to light by connecting higher education classrooms to Wikipedia. 

The student quotes above, merely a fraction of the insightful participant feedback we’ve received along the way, underscore the multi-layered and profound impact of this project – on the individual student editors throughout their research and writing processes, and on their peers and on generations to come, inspired by these new contributions to Wikipedia.

Our partnership with Broadcom Foundation brought 131 new biographies of diverse leaders in STEM to Wikipedia, including historic figures like Blanche J. Lawrence, a biochemist who worked on the Manhattan Project, Mariah Gladstone, founder of online cooking platform Indigikitchen, and George Biddle Kelley, New York’s first officially registered Black engineer.

And now, thanks to generous new funding from the Broadcom Foundation, higher education students at institutions across the country will continue to build upon these efforts to improve Wikipedia’s coverage of diverse leaders in STEM. 

“This partnership is one of the most important Broadcom Foundation has engaged in,” said Paula Golden, president of the Broadcom Foundation. “It brings stories of important STEM pioneers to light that inspire young people of diverse backgrounds and ethnicities to follow in their footsteps.”

Supported by Wiki Education’s resources and staff, the students will focus on expanding STEM biographies on Wikipedia, particularly of women and people of color in math and engineering, to showcase the pioneers who look like them.

The project will engage faculty members new to the Wikipedia Student Program, in addition to those who will have previously empowered their students to improve and add to Wikipedia’s biographies through their Wikipedia assignments.

Interested in incorporating a Wikipedia assignment into your course? Visit teach.wikiedu.org to learn more about the free resources, digital tools, and staff support that Wiki Education offers to postsecondary instructors in the United States and Canada.

The scholars bring their deep pedagogical and subject area expertise, as well as their passion for teaching with Wikipedia – each has incorporated a Wikipedia assignment into their curriculum. 

“My students light up when they realize their class work on invisibilized or silenced communities can have real-world impact,” emphasized Dean Allbritton, associate professor of Spanish and director of the Center for the Arts and Humanities at Colby College. “The knowledge that they are actively making space for others feels timely and important in a way that scholarly work often may not. I joined this committee because Wikipedia still has so much room to grow and so many opportunities still to make space in this world for those who have not yet been afforded it.” 

Advisory committee members will support Wiki Education’s Knowledge Equity initiative in a variety of ways, engaging with our outreach and communications projects, serving as panelists at academic conferences, and pursuing academic publishing opportunities. Members will also provide guidance and feedback on new Wiki Education curricular resources related to the initiative.

“I’m excited about promoting the use of Wikipedia editing projects in the art history classroom because I am a big fan of giving students ‘authentic tasks’ that have a real-world impact,” explained Rachel Miller, associate professor of art history at Sacramento State University. “There is sometimes a perception that art history is just about sitting in a dark classroom and memorizing identifying information for works of art to regurgitate on an exam. I think art history can be so much more than that, and I hope to help other art history instructors discover the rewards students get from editing Wikipedia.” 

Committee member Katie Holt has incorporated the Wikipedia assignment into her courses at the College of Wooster since 2017. Reflecting on her decision to join the committee, the history professor underscored how empowering and impactful the Wikipedia coursework has been for her students.

“Students are rightfully proud of how their research and writing makes a freely accessible resource like Wikipedia stronger and more representative,” said Holt.

2025 Humanities & Social Justice Advisory Committee members:

Dean Allbritton

Dr. Dean Allbritton is an Associate Professor of Spanish and Director of the Center for the Arts and Humanities at Colby College. His research focuses on representations of health, sexuality, and gender in contemporary Spanish culture, with particular attention to the ongoing HIV/AIDS epidemic. Since 2018, he has integrated Wikipedia into his teaching, particularly in courses that highlight LGBTQ+ voices in Spain, expanding the visibility of lesser-known queer individuals in Spanish history and culture. A participant in Wiki Education’s Scholars & Scientists Program, he has also presented on the transformative role of Wikipedia in the classroom at the National Humanities Conference. His students have contributed over 35,000 words to Wikipedia; their work has received more than 127,000 pageviews during their courses, reinforcing Wikipedia’s potential to amplify marginalized voices and engage students in public scholarship.

Katie Holt

Dr. Katie Holt holds the Aileen Dunham Professorship in History at the College of Wooster (Ohio), where she teaches courses in Brazilian, Latin American, and Latino/a/x histories as well as digital storytelling and digital humanities methods courses. She has been teaching with Wikipedia since 2017 and enjoys how these assignments can both improve students’ information literacy and serve as a format for them to make meaningful contributions to improve public, freely accessible information on topics they are passionate about.  As of February 2025, Dr. Holt’s students have collectively improved 455 articles, adding more than 310,600 words and 3,700 references, and getting more than 30.7 million page views.  She has presented on teaching with Wikipedia as a pedagogical strategy for addressing content gaps about Latin American and Latino/a/x history at the American Historical Association (2025) and alongside her colleague Educational Technologist Emily Armour at Kenyon College’s Center for Innovative pedagogy What Works Conference (2023).

Rachel Miller

Dr. Rachel Miller is an Associate Professor of Art History at Sacramento State where she teaches courses on ancient, medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque art, using teaching methods that place European art in a broader global context and decolonize European art’s traditional normative position in the canon of art history. Professor Miller has presented papers and workshops on art history pedagogy and organized pedagogy panels at the College Art Association and the Renaissance Society of America annual conferences. She has written on pedagogy for the Sixteenth-Century Society Journal and Art History Teaching Resources and has a forthcoming essay, co-written with Dr. Mya Dosch, in the edited volume, Equity-Enhancing Strategies for the Art History Classroom. Professor Miller has been using Wikipedia-editing projects in the classroom since 2017, and to-date, her students have edited almost 400 articles, contributing more than half a million words of new content to Wikipedia.

David M. Peña-Guzmán

Dr. David M. Peña-Guzmán is Associate Professor of Humanities and Comparative World Literature at SF State in San Francisco, California. He specializes in animal studies, the history and philosophy of science, theories of consciousness, and 20th century continental philosophy. He is the author of When Animals Dream: The Hidden World of Animal Consciousness, and Philosophy and Its Myths, and co-author of Chimpanzee Rights: The Philosophers’ Brief. He is also co-host of the philosophy podcast Overthink.

La’Tonya Rease Miles

A literature and cultural studies scholar by training, Dr. La’Tonya (LT) Rease Miles is a clinical faculty member in the Department of Education and Counseling Psychology at Santa Clara University.  Her research interests include the hidden curriculum in higher education, narratives about the first-generation college experience, and the representation of first-generation students in popular culture. She began teaching Wikipedia alongside her graduate students in 2022 and has gone on to coordinate two international edit-a-thons, including one focused on American authors who also identify as first-generation to college. 

Juana María Rodríguez

Dr. Juana María Rodríguez is Professor of Ethnic Studies and Performance Studies at UC Berkeley and has been collaborating with Wiki Education in her classrooms since 2016. She is the author of Puta Life: Seeing Latinas, Working Sex (Duke UP, 2023); Sexual Futures, Queer Gestures, and Other Latina Longings (NYU Press, 2014); and Queer Latinidad: Identity Practices, Discursive Spaces (NYU Press, 2003). In 2023 she was awarded the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies Kessler Prize for her career long contributions to LGBT Studies.

Jennifer Stoever

Dr. Jennifer Lynn Stoever is Associate Professor of English at Binghamton University, Co-founder and Editor-in-Chief of Sounding Out!: The Sound Studies Blog, and author of The Sonic Color Line: Race and the Cultural Politics of Listening (NYU Press, 2016). She is a founding member of the Engaged Digital Humanities Working Group at Binghamton University and Co-Director of The Binghamton Punk D.I.Y. Community Archive.  A 2018 Whiting Foundation Public-Facing Scholarship seed grant awardee and a 2023 National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow, Jennifer has published research in American Quarterly, Social Text, Radical History Review, Modernist Cultures, and the Journal of Interdisciplinary Voice Studies among others, as well as in The Oxford Handbook of Hip Hop (2018) and The Oxford Handbook of Sound Art (2021).  Currently, she is co-editing Power in Listening: The Sounding Out! Reader, with Liana Silva and Aaron Trammell (forthcoming on NYU Press), as well as the three-volume Encyclopedia of Sound Studies contracted with Bloomsbury Press (with Michael Bull and Holger Schulze). Her book-in-progress, Living Room Revolutions: Black and Brown Women Collecting Records, Selecting Sounds, and Making New Worlds in the 1970s Bronx and Beyond, inspired the course “Black Women and Creativity in the 1960s and 70s” that she has taught in partnership with Wiki Education since Spring 2024. You can read about her students’ work increasing the Wikipedia presence of Black women artists in “Wikipedia Edit-a-Thon honors Black artists” and Wiki Education’s“History is only as equitable as its sources and writers.”

When searching for information on health-related topics, people turn to Wikipedia more than any other source. While it may come as no surprise that the general public visits Wikipedia for answers to questions and to inform their decisions as healthcare patients or caregivers, healthcare experts including providers, researchers, and instructors also often utilize the online encyclopedia within the context of their professional work. 

Given the impact and reach of Wikipedia’s healthcare content, it’s imperative that the information is accurate, up-to-date, high-quality, and trustworthy. Thanks to a new project supported by the Eugene Washington PCORI Engagement Award Program, an initiative of the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI), Wiki Education will collaborate with higher education faculty across healthcare professions to support their students in the impactful work to improve Wikipedia’s coverage of healthcare topics. 

The two-year project aims to significantly enhance the quality of openly accessible information on critical topics including stroke prevention, postpartum care, and radiation therapy. 

Drawing on the rigorous evaluation of medical research available in PCORI-funded Systematic Reviews, the postsecondary students will improve Wikipedia articles by developing and adding new content, as well as adding missing citations to existing content as needed. The faculty and students will join Wiki Education’s Wikipedia Student Program and receive our staff guidance, curriculum, subject-specific resources, and digital tracking tools to support their coursework on Wikipedia. 

In addition to supporting the student editors’ contributions to Wikipedia, we’ll also explore their perspectives on their Wikipedia experiences to better understand how to improve future student engagement with this work.

To aid our engagement with key stakeholders, Wiki Education will form a Medical Community Advisory Committee composed of health professions faculty and students. The group will provide strategic guidance throughout the project, including ideas for outreach initiatives to reach medical educators, reflections on the results of surveys and focus groups, and suggestions for ensuring sustainability of the project.  

PCORI is an independent, nonprofit organization with a mission to fund patient-centered comparative clinical effectiveness research (CER) that equips patients, their caregivers and clinicians with the evidence-based information they need to make better informed health and health care decisions. The Wiki Education Engagement Award project is part of a portfolio of projects that PCORI has funded to help disseminate PCORI-funded research findings. 

This new project builds upon previous work through which we trained medical professionals and health professions students how to add the high-quality information from the systematic reviews to Wikipedia, working to ensure articles include research on patient-centered outcomes. Their collective contributions to improve more than 40 medical articles across Wikipedia have been viewed more than 11 million times.

We express our gratitude to PCORI for their support of this new project, and encourage any interested instructor to visit teach.wikiedu.org to learn more about incorporating a Wikipedia assignment into their courses. This project is funded through a Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) Eugene Washington PCORI Engagement Award (EADI #38991).

“There are few things more foundational than building a society’s communal knowledge,” said Gingras. “Wiki Education’s effort to evangelize and develop Wikipedia authorship are critical to achieving that objective.”

Throughout his 50-year career, Gingras has focused on the advance of news and information systems in an evolving digital society – from the evolution of search engines to enabling the next generation global news ecosystem. 

“Richard’s innovative spirit and deep knowledge about the web will bring invaluable insights to our work,” said Frank Schulenburg, Executive Director of Wiki Education. “His contributions will help us advance our goals and strengthen Wiki Education’s impact in the ever-evolving digital information landscape.“

For many years, Gingras served as the Global Vice President for News. In his current role, Gingras provides strategic guidance on how Google presents news to its users as well as advising Google’s efforts to enable a healthy, open ecosystem for quality journalism, including various programs to enable journalists and news providers to be effective and sustainable in our digital world. 

Gingras co-founded the Center for News, Technology, and Innovation, an independent global policy research center, that seeks to encourage independent, sustainable media, and foster informed public policy conversations to maintain a free press and an open internet. Gingras also served as a member of the Knight Commission o n Trust, Media, and Democracy, and helped found the Trust Project.

His broad experience with digital ventures includes leading Salon.com, as well as positions at Apple, the @Home Network, and the Excite search engine. Gingras also serves on the boards of the First Amendment Coalition, the International Center for Journalists, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, the UC Berkeley School of Journalism and PRX, the public media podcast network.