The Knight Foundation named Maribel Perez Wadsworth, the former Gannett president and USA Today publisher, as its next CEO, replacing outgoing president Alberto Ibargüen.
Wadsworth will take over the news nonprofit in January.
“Knight Foundation is a leader at the nexus of the things I care about so deeply—journalistic excellence and defense of the First Amendment, fostering engaged citizenry, and building thriving, inclusive communities— all in service of sustaining a strong democracy,” Wadsworth said.
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Wadsworth, a longtime Gannett employee-turned-executive, took over as president of Gannett in June 2022. She was named USA Today’s publisher in 2018, becoming the second woman and first woman of color to assume the role.
During her short-lived tenure as Gannett president, Wadsworth oversaw deep cuts to the newspaper company’s workforce throughout the year. She announced her resignation last November, just after the company posted a $54 million third-quarter loss and a month before it laid off 6 percent of its workforce.
Her appointment comes months after the Knight Foundation committed $150 million to Press Forward, a new initiative designed to infuse local newsrooms with cash to cement their status as community pillars.
“John S. and James L. Knight were newsmen who left a fortune to better the American communities they served,” Ibargüen said in a statement. “They believed that a well-informed community could best ‘determine its own true interests’ and they entrusted future generations of trustees to do just that. I look forward to Maribel's leadership, evolving the meaning and execution of that mission in the years to come.”
