Who Is Katherine Maher?

I've long had an interest in the sociology of what C Wright Mills called the power elite, modified by Ferdinand Lundberg's view that a somewhat smaller cabal of powerful families and their retainers actually controls the planet.

Over the past week or so, we've seen a new star rise in what must be that constellation, Katherine Maher, named at age 41 to be CEO of National Public Radio this past January with no journalistic experience, although she has a lengthy resume in foreign policy and non-profit circles. Uri Berliner had little to say about her directly in the critical essay that led to his resignation, except to say,

A few weeks ago, NPR welcomed a new CEO, Katherine Maher, who’s been a leader in tech. She doesn’t have a news background, which could be an asset given where things stand. I’ll be rooting for her. It’s a tough job. Her first rule could be simple enough: don’t tell people how to think. It could even be the new North Star.

But this is an example of what I accused Berliner of yesterday, obliviousness. Katherine Maher has never been "a leader in tech", so let's start by taking a look at her real backgound. Via Wikipedia,

Maher grew up in Wilton, Connecticut, and attended Wilton High School. After high school, Maher graduated from the Arabic Language Institute's Arabic Language Intensive Program of The American University in Cairo in 2003, which she recalled as a formative experience that developed her interest in the Middle East. Maher subsequently studied at the Institut français d'études arabes de Damas in Syria and spent time in Lebanon and Tunisia.

In 2005, Maher received a bachelor's degree from New York University in Middle Eastern and Islamic studies.

Maher originally intended to be an academic and work for human rights and international development organizations.

Two key markers are conspicuously missing here -- she went to a public high school, not a prestigious private prep school, and she didn't go to an Ivy-level university. I did a web search on NYU, and I found a number of opinions along this line:

Things may have changed, but when I was growing up here/applying to college, NYU had a reputation for being the school that wealthy parents with more dollars than sense sent their kids to because they HAD to come to school here. You know that USC scandal? That's how NYU was perceived, all the way. Wealthy parents who had money to blow spending $60k a year on their kids to come here "take advantage of the city", i.e. partying hard and enjoying life downtown, with few repercussions because their parents were millionaires anyway. It was known much more for its glamorous/wealthy students rather than its intellectual rigor; but I'm 32 so maybe that all has changed in the intervening years.

In other words, it kinda sounds to me as if NYU is to New York as USC is to LA, and I say that as someone who has taught and studied at USC. But what about Ms Maher's susequent career? Back to Wikipedia:

After internships at the Council on Foreign Relations and Eurasia Group, in 2004 and 2005, respectively, Maher began working at HSBC in London, Germany, and Canada as part of their international manager development program.

So OK, it looks like she was being fast-tracked into the kind of foreign policy positions she'd studied for in the Arabic program in Cairo and in Lebanon and Tunisia. In fact, I would almost say she was being groomed for some sort of deep-state intelligence-related work in that area -- but then, no more spooking, she's doing banking. And then banking doesn't work out. Things quickly turn gaseous:

In 2007, Maher returned to New York City, where from 2007 to 2010, she worked at UNICEF as an innovation and communication officer. She worked to promote the use of technology to improve people's lives. She traveled extensively to work on issues related to maternal health, HIV/AIDS prevention, and youth participation in technology. One of her first projects at UNICEF involved testing MediaWiki extensions related to accessibility in Ethiopia. Another project received USAid Development 2.0 Challenge grant funding to work on the use of mobile phones to monitor nutrition in children in Malawi.

MediaWiki extensions related to accessibility in Ethiopia? What on earth is that? And this must be from her own resume -- hire me as a key member of your team, I worked on MediaWiki extensions related to accessibility in Ethiopia! Not only that, but I worked on the use of mobile phones to monitor nutrition in children in Malawi!

For several more years, there was more gaseousness, for instance consulting

on technology for international development and democratization, working on ICT for accountability and governance with a focus on the role of mobile phones and other technologies in facilitating civil society and institutional reform, particularly in the Middle East and Africa.

Then she worked at widely disparate jobs for a year or two at a time.

From 2013 to 2014, Maher was advocacy director at the Washington, D.C.-based Access Now. . . . Maher was chief communications officer of the Wikimedia Foundation from April 2014 to March 2016. . . . Maher became interim executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation in March 2016 following the resignation of executive director Lila Tretiko. . . . In 2019, Maher became CEO of Wikimedia. She proposed potentially paying contributors to help address gaps in diversity. Maher stepped down from her positions as CEO and executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation on April 15, 2021.

Then there's a three-year gap. At least back in the day, HR departments didn't like to see gaps like that on a resume; they could be covering up for, say, a stretch in prison, or maybe rehab. Whatever the explanation here, when she left Wikimedia, nobody seems to have wanted to hire her for useful work. Instead, after the three-year lacuna, it was back to non-profits:

From 2022 to 2023, Maher was a member of the US State Department's Foreign Affairs Policy Board, an expert panel established in 2011 by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to advise US officials. As of 2023, she chairs the board of directors of the Signal Foundation. She is also the board chair of nonprofit organization, Adventure Scientists as of January 2023. In October that year, Web Summit appointed Maher as its new chief executive, to replace Paddy Cosgrave.

Wait a moment. Web Summit named her CEO in October of 2023, but she became CEO of NPR in March 2024? Sounds like something didn't work out bigly at Web Summit. I asked the web what Web Summit does and got this answer:

Web Summit’s mission has been to create software that enables meaningful connections between the CEOs, founders, investors, media, politicians and cultural figureheads who are reshaping the world.

In other words, it puts out gas, which seems to be the one thing Ms Maher has wide experience in doing. The overall impression I have is that her career has mostly involved trying one or another field and moving on to another without accomplishing much in any. But why does she keep moving from CEO position to CEO position? So far, I can get ony a partial answer. Wikipedia says her mother is Ceci Maher,

an American executive and politician. She currently serves as a member of the Connecticut State Senate, representing District 26, which encompasses Darien, New Canaan, Redding, Ridgefield, Stamford, Weston, Westport and Wilton, for the Democratic Party.

So there seems to be upscale Connecticut money in the family background, although Ceci became a member of the state senate very late in the day, elected only in 2022. Ceci's husband, Katherine's father, was Gordon Roberts Maher, a Goldman Sachs banking executive. His obituary says,

Gordon Roberts Maher, a retired vice president of commodities operations, and spiritual Parisian, died October 5, 2020 in Norwalk, CT of complications from alcoholism.

Gordon, known as Rob, or less frequently but more cherished to him, Gordo, Maher was born in Norwalk, Connecticut, growing up in Wilton, CT for a time. . . The family then decamped to St. Germain du Pres, France as a result of their father’s work at IBM where family lore contends he may or may not have been a postwar spy.

It sounds like there's generational wealth in the family, plus a likely intelligence involvement, which probably is how Katherine got fast-tracked into the Arab Studies program until she quickly didn't work out, went into banking -- likely via her father's influence -- until she didn't work out there, and then went into non-profits, where she doesn't seem to be working out all that well.

As far as I can see, the task of the power elite here has been to find someplace to park her. I doubt if it was ever expected that she'd accomplish much at NPR, and the consensus for now is that nothing will change there, whether she can hold onto her job or not. But given her track record, I don't expect her to last long, whether it's her tweets that do her in or something else.