Skip to main content Skip to secondary navigation
Main content start

Three news industry leaders join JSK Journalism Fellowships board

The innovative journalists bring experience in areas crucial to the future of journalism, information credibility and democracy.
Headshots of new board members Sarah Alvarez, Marcus Mabry and Zach Seward.
New board members Sarah Alvarez, Marcus Mabry and Zach Seward.

The Board of Visitors for the John S. Knight Journalism Fellowships at Stanford welcomes three new members this fall. These media industry leaders are shaping today’s conversations in journalism and pursuing solutions to its contemporary challenges, such as increasing threats to the integrity of information.

“With these additions, we are seeking to expand our program’s connections to leaders who are shaping the future of journalism through their innovative and forward-thinking work,” said JSK Director Dawn Garcia.

The new members recently appointed by the Stanford president:

  • Sarah Alvarez, a JSK alum and founder of Outlier Media, a Detroit-based service journalism organization.
  • Marcus Mabry, senior vice president of digital editorial and programming for CNN Worldwide.
  •  Zach Seward, editorial director of AI initiatives at The New York Times.

“With their range of expertise across the most pressing needs journalism faces today, Sarah, Marcus and Zach will broaden the JSK Stanford program's ability to support the fellows for years to come,” said the chair of the board, Karen Wickre, principal at KVOX Media and former editorial director at Twitter (now X).

Panel Provides Guidance and Expertise

Wickre and two other members of the board – Sue Cross, founder of Cross Media Development and past CEO of the Institute for Nonprofit News, and Kinsey Wilson, founder and head of Newspack at Automattic – led the search for the three new members. The JSK Board of Visitors is appointed by the Stanford president as a vital liaison to the media and technology industries. Its policy guidance helps shape the direction of the continually evolving JSK fellowship experience. JSK has awarded more than 1,000 fellowships to journalists from more than 80 countries since its 1966 inception.

More about the new JSK Board of Visitors members

Headshot of Sarah Alvarez

Sarah Alvarez is the founder of Outlier Media, a Detroit-based service journalism organization filling information, accountability and connection gaps in Detroit. The newsroom identifies, reports, and delivers valuable information to equip Detroiters to hold people and systems accountable for harm and to contribute to a thriving community.  Outlier’s core product is an SMS service that texts critical info to residents and connects them directly with reporters. Her methodologies are now being used by journalism organizations across the world. Before founding Outlier Media in 2016 as a JSK Fellow at Stanford University, she worked in civil rights law, nonprofit management, and public radio.

She is a graduate of the University of Michigan, The Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University and Columbia Law School. Her work has also been featured in The New York Times, ProPublica, NPR, and The Detroit Free Press. She lives in northwest Detroit with her family.

Headshot of Marcus Mabry

Marcus Mabry is the senior vice president of digital editorial and programming for CNN Worldwide. He is a national news leader with deep international experience and high visibility in global broadcast news and social media. An award-winning reporter and editor with a record of innovation, Mabry previously led CNN’s first mobile programming team, and broke audience records from Twitter, where he was the first North American editor of Twitter Moments. He worked at The New York Times in various editor roles, and he conceived and led its first global blog. Previously, at Newsweek, he was an editor, foreign correspondent and chief of correspondents, and has been under fire in Bosnia, Croatia, Sudan, Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

He is a former Murrow Press Fellow at The Council on Foreign Relations, the author of two books, and is a lifetime member of NABJ and the co-founder of NABJ’s LGBTQ+ Task Force. Mabry has bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Stanford and studied at The Sorbonne and the Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris.

Headshot of Zach Seward

Zach Seward is a journalist and media entrepreneur with one of the most creative journalism success records in the U.S. spanning journalism’s editorial and business reinvention. His career includes work at legacy media organizations and ascendant news startups, and he has focused on building new editorial products geared toward better informing the public. As editorial director of AI initiatives at The New York Times, he currently leads a newsroom team prototyping uses of generative AI and other machine-learning techniques. He frequently speaks at conferences on the topic of responsible and effective uses of AI for journalism.

He was a co-founder of Quartz, the global business news organization, and served in various leadership roles, including CEO. Quartz won hundreds of awards for journalism and product innovation during his decade-long tenure. Previously, at The Wall Street Journal, he created its first social media team. He was a founding editor of Harvard’s Nieman Journalism Lab, and has taught at NYU's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

More News Topics

More News