Malka Older, Global Voices’ new Executive Director. Photo by Allana Taranto, Ars Magna. Used with permission.

September 15, 2024

Global Voices welcomes its new executive director, Malka Older, an acclaimed science fiction writer, academic, and former aid worker with more than a decade of on-the-ground experience in humanitarian relief and international development work from Sudan to Indonesia.

Older, who was selected by the Global Voices board in a rigorous, global, six-month search, succeeds Ivan Sigal, Global Voices’ transformational executive director, who over the past 16 years strengthened and expanded Global Voices’ work and community of contributors. Sigal announced in February his intention to transition to a new chapter and is now working with Older to ensure a smooth and successful transition.

“For the past 16 years, Ivan has led Global Voices with grace, empathy and wisdom through profound changes in the world and the media we use to understand it. It’s hard to imagine Global Voices without him,” said Ethan Zuckerman, a cofounder of Global Voices, along with Rebecca MacKinnon, both of whom are current board members. “But it's also hard to describe just how excited we are about Malka Older and her truly unique combination of skills and experiences. It's easy to imagine a Global Voices under her leadership that transforms to meet this moment while maintaining the values of diversity and engagement we've always held.”

Global Voices board chair Mary Kay Magistad, who led the search for a new executive director, said Older impressed the board with her deep understanding and respect for Global Voices’ values and mission, and her visionary thinking about the work Global Voices does and could do.

“Malka told us that she believes that ‘transparent, ethical, multi-perspective information is one of the most critical levers we can use to improve democracy, equity and empathy’,” Magistad said. “She says she sees Global Voices as ‘an incredible experiment, community, and platform for building a better world.’ That’s exactly the mindset Global Voices needs in its senior leadership, and that it has had in Ivan, and in managing director Georgia Popplewell. We will always be grateful to Ivan for his extraordinary work in leading Global Voices over the past 16 years, and are delighted to welcome Malka as his successor.”

Global Voices, founded in 2004, is an international, multilingual community of writers, translators, and human rights activists in dozens of countries that leverages the power of the internet to tell stories that build understanding across borders. Older has long been a fan of Global Voices, and sees synergies between her own interests and Global Voices’ areas of focus.

“In joining Global Voices, I'm thrilled to become part of an organization that engages with so many of the issues I care about: information; cross-cultural and cross-linguistic connection and empathy; human rights and democracy; community, decentralization, and governance; indigenous and endangered languages,” Older said. “I'm incredibly impressed with everything that the Global Voices community has accomplished, and I look forward to working together to continue building understanding and telling important stories among the new challenges and opportunities in this rapidly changing media environment.”

Older’s thinking about such challenges and opportunities are reflected both in her science fiction writing and in her academic work as a faculty associate at Arizona State University’s School for the Future of Innovation in Society, and as a research associate at the Crisis Lab at Sciences Po in Paris. It was also at Sciences Po where Older completed her PhD in sociology, focused on the dynamics of post-disaster approaches by governments. Her own decade of experience in humanitarian relief and development work included running Mercy Corps’ office in Darfur, Sudan, and serving as Mercy Corps’ director of programs in Indonesia, as well as doing consulting projects in Ecuador, the Solomon Islands, Japan, Myanmar, Uganda, and Sri Lanka.

Older’s first three science fiction novels, Infomocracy (2016), Null States (2017) and State Tectonics (2018), form the Centenal Cycle trilogy, a finalist for the Hugo Awards’ Best Series award in 2018. Infomocracy was also named one of the best books of 2016 by the Washington Post, Kirkus. Older’s novella The Mimicking of Known Successes (2023) was a finalist for a 2024 Hugo Award, and has been followed by The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles (2024).

“As I read Malka’s work, it seemed as if the conversation I was having daily with Global Voices colleagues could have been transposed into her stories. It was uncanny,” said Sigal. “Her polymathic and unconventional approach to questions of information orders, governance, and how communities and organizations emerge out of crisis really resonate with Global Voices’ mission and aspirations.”

Older, a U.S. citizen with Cuban heritage from one parent, currently lives in Europe. Besides her native English, she is fluent in Spanish and Japanese, and speaks conversational French, Italian, and Bahasa Indonesia.

Older can be reached through her Global Voices author page.

– The Global Voices board