EDITOR-IN-CHIEF, THE GUARDIAN
Katharine Viner is the editor in chief of the Guardian, the first woman to be appointed to the job. She grew up in Yorkshire, attended Ripon Grammar School and read English at Oxford, beginning her journalistic career at the age of 21 by winning a competition run by the Guardian. Work experience on Cosmopolitan magazine beckoned and she stayed on to become features assistant, then news and careers editor, subsequently spending three years at the Sunday Times magazine. In 1997, she started on the women’s page at the Guardian, moving on to edit the Saturday weekend supplement and having a stint as features editor before being promoted to deputy editor in 2008.
After running the Saturday Guardian for four years, she took off for Australia, overseeing the launch of the paper’s online edition there, which became a notable journalistic and commercial success. Some time in New York followed, where she was in charge ofto run The the Guardian’s American edition, and then it was back to London to take the top job. Outside journalism, Katharine co-wrote a play with Alan Rickman, My Name Is Rachel Corrie, which was based on the emails of a young American activist who was killed in Gaza in 2003. London’s Royal Court Theatre put it on in 2005.