Ben Werdmuller

Ben Werdmuller is senior director of technology at ProPublica. He leads product engineering, IT and security.

Previously, he was CTO at The 19th. Werdmuller co-founded Elgg, one of the first open source social networking platforms. It was used to create private social networks by universities, Fortune 500 companies, global NGOs and governments and to organize social activism like the Spanish anti-austerity movement.

Werdmuller also was director of investments at Matter, an accelerator that supported early-stage media startups. There, he invested in teams, supported them in fundraising and helped to teach a five-month venture design-thinking program. Known, the publishing platform he co-founded, had previously been supported by Matter and was acquired by Medium.

Werdmuller has blogged since 1998 and is an advocate for the open web. He is proud to sit on the boards of Tiny News Collective, which supports local newsrooms, and A New Social, which helps to build alternative social media platforms.