Meet the team
The founders of First Draft Media are three press freedom advocates who believe that to make journalism viable and sustainable again, the industry needs to refocus its energy on their audience, on building products that serve their communities, and on collaborating with one another.
We are building First Draft Media to empower newsrooms to reimagine what journalism means to them and their audiences, thereby turning journalism into a viable business model.
Sudeshna Chanda (Chief Product Officer) is a media strategist and product thinker dedicated to advancing independent journalism through news product innovation, audience engagement, and support for exiled media. She specializes in re-imagining journalism with a strong audience-centric approach, ensuring that editorial strategies are aligned with the needs and interests of the people they serve. Her work focuses on building sustainable news products that prioritize impact measurement, audience feedback, and innovative storytelling formats. She has been instrumental in developing resources tailored to the unique challenges of exiled media, including strategies for audience growth, financial sustainability, and editorial resilience.
Marcel Oomens (Chief Technologist) is an information scientists and software engineer with a strong affinity to the tech-4-good community: a technologist-for-good. His career has focused on journalism and publishers tech, including cryptography, online privacy and digital security for journalists and their sources—whistleblower protection, censorship circumvention and shutdown mitigating technology. He specializes in publisher-first and audience-centric anti-censorship solutions that help publishers to maintain audience reach under the most adversarial censorship conditions.
Joris van Duijne (Chief Executive Officer) has been a media-development specialist and press freedom activist for over 20 years. Known for his pivotal role as Executive Director of Zamaneh Media, Joris has been instrumental in driving the organization's strategic vision, diversification and growth. He has a particular focus on fostering independent journalism through media viability and business development, also for non-profit outlets, and digital transformation in challenging environments. Joris has also worked for Free Voice, Free Press Unlimited and the Doha Center for Media Freedom.