Maria Ressa

Maria Ressa is CEO, co-founder and President of Rappler, the Philippines's top digital news site. She grew up in America and studied at Princeton University before working as a journalist in Asia for over 35 years. Maria has endured multiple arrests by the Duterte government, which is the subject of the 2020 Sundance Film Festival documentary, A THOUSAND CUTS. Ressa won the UNESCO World Press Freedom Prize 2021 and is nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize 2021. She was TIME Person of the Year in 2018, and was named by TIME as one of the most inspiring and influential women of the century. She has also featured in Prospect's Top 50 Thinkers, Bloomberg 50, and the BBC's Top 100 Women. She has received countless awards for her work, including the Golden Pen of Freedom Award from the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers. Before founding Rappler, Maria investigated terrorism in Southeast Asia, opening and running CNN's Manila Bureau and Jakarta Bureaus, before heading the largest news group in the Philippines. She wrote Seeds of Terror in 2003 and From Bin Laden to Facebook in 2012.