Our Leadership Team | Reuters News Agency

Leadership Team

Paul Bascobert

President

Paul Bascobert joined Thomson Reuters as President of Reuters News in September 2022. In this role, he leads all aspects of the company’s media business and operations.

Bascobert has been an operating executive, adviser and entrepreneur for more than 25 years and has deep experience in transformation and growth in news, media and SaaS businesses.

He was previously co-founder and CEO of Blue Ocean Acquisition Corp – a special purpose acquisition company focused on media, marketplace and tech platform businesses; CEO of Gannett Co., Inc – one of the largest local media companies, which owns more than 700 daily and weekly publications in the U.S. and UK; President of American media and technology company XO Group; and President of Yodle Inc during the launch of the SaaS marketing platform.

Prior to this, Bascobert was President of Bloomberg Businessweek and Head of Business Operations for the newly created Bloomberg Media Group, as well as Senior Vice President of Operations and then Chief Marketing Officer at Dow Jones.

Paul has a degree in electrical engineering from Kettering University and an M.B.A. in Finance from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Josh London

Chief Marketing Officer and Head of Reuters Professional

Josh London is the Chief Marketing Officer and Head of Reuters Professional. He is responsible for all aspects of marketing and data and analytics globally, in addition to leading Reuters Professional, comprising Reuters.com, Reuters Events and the Reuters Plus content studio.

London is an entrepreneurial executive with a proven history of creating and leading digital businesses and managing the digital transformation of established companies in both business-to-business and business-to-consumer markets. Prior to joining Reuters, London served as global CMO of IDG Communications, a technology media, data and marketing services firm with operations in 147 countries. Josh earlier founded and was managing partner of Salt Island Ventures, a marketing and management consultancy serving startups and established digital, media and entertainment clients. In the role of Chief Operating Officer of SX2 Media Labs he led the transformation of Computer Shopper magazine to a digital property, which was then acquired by Ziff Davis and Great Hill Partners.

With broad experience in general management, marketing, product, strategy, M&A and business development, London has held roles at a variety of leading media and technology companies including CNET, ZDNet, Ziff Davis, and Thomas Publishing Company.

Josh holds a B.A. in English from Boston University. He serves as a Senior Deputy: Media, Entertainment and Sport for the World Economic Forum. In 2016, London was honored as a Folio:100 C-Level Visionary.

Oke Okaro

Chief Product Officer, Reuters

Oke Okaro is Chief Product Officer of Reuters.

Oke leads the global product organization across Reuters, and is responsible for product strategy, product design, product development and product delivery across all lines of business.

Oke is a digital innovation leader with a unique blend of product, technology, business and operations experience from over 20 years spent driving growth and digital transformation of large content creators/distributors, and consumer-facing digital properties.

Most recently, Oke was Senior Vice President of Business Operations at The Walt Disney Company where he led Business Operations for the technology organization behind Disney’s global content supply chain and portfolio of media & entertainment brands which includes ESPN, Disney, Hulu, ABC, Lucas Film, Marvel, Pixar, and 20th Century Fox, among others.

In prior roles, Oke started, built and led the mobile business at ESPN and later at Bloomberg. He also led product management for Verizon Consumer Group.

Oke started his career as a Software Engineer for the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) and Symbol Technologies.

Oke obtained his bachelor’s in computer science from the University of Hertfordshire, England and MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. Oke holds several patents for mobile innovations.

Sue Brooks

Head of Product Development and Agency Strategy, Reuters News Agency

Sue Brooks has worked with editorial content her entire career and reported for newspapers, radio and TV in the UK before putting her knowledge to use as a product leader. She has held editorial roles at the BBC, Associated Press, Channel 4 and ITN where she edited the flagship News at Ten. She joined Reuters in 2015 as Global Head of Product, before becoming Interim Head, Reuters News Agency. In 2019, she was appointed MD, Product Development & Agency Strategy.

Sue is a Columbia School of Journalism Sulzberger Fellow.

Alphonse Hardel
Global Head of Business Development and Strategy, Reuters

Alphonse Hardel is the Global Head of Business Development and Strategy at Reuters. Alphonse is responsible for defining and implementing the overall strategic direction of Reuters, delivering strategic partnerships and developing organic and inorganic growth opportunities.

He previously led strategy and business development for the Agency division of Reuters News, and helped deliver a range of key projects, including implementing the partnership strategy for Reuters Connect, securing innovative partnerships, conceiving and launching a new commercial model for digital video, and negotiating contracts with key customers and partners.

Alphonse has been with Reuters since 2005.

Jane Barrett

Jane Barrett is the Global Editor, Media News Strategy for Reuters. As part of the Editorial leadership team, she has responsibility for new business across the 171-year-old news agency, from growing output and revenue in audio and fact-checking to modernising journalistic formats and content. Previously, she led the multimedia transformation of the global newsroom to increase Reuters digital output. Before that, she was the business editor for EMEA, started up a financial video service and was a reporter in Italy and Spain. Outside Reuters she is a trustee of Podium.me, a charity that gets young people into journalism and storytelling through podcasts, and is a board member of the World Editors’ Forum. She has a lifelong passion for classical music and being outside.

Alessandra Galloni

Editor-in-Chief, Reuters

Alessandra Galloni became editor-in-chief of Reuters in April 2021. She oversees all editorial functions across video, text, pictures, and graphics. She is the first female editor-in-chief in the organization’s 170-year history.

Previously, Galloni was global managing editor, overseeing news planning and creation, where she was responsible for overseeing Reuters coverage and developing stories with a cross-regional focus. She first joined Reuters in 1996 for the Italian-language news service in Rome, later moving to the equities reporting team in London. She re-joined Reuters in September 2013 as editor of the Southern Europe bureau following 13 years at The Wall Street Journal, where she worked as a reporter, economics and business writer and editor, in London, Paris and Rome.

Galloni is the recipient of the 2020 Lawrence Minard Editor Award from the Gerald Loeb Foundation and the UCLA Anderson School of Management, one of the highest honors a business journalist can receive. She is also the recipient of an Overseas Press Club Award and a UK Business Journalist of the Year Award.

An Italian national, Galloni is a graduate of Harvard University and has a Master’s degree from the London School of Economics.

Simon Robinson

Executive Editor

Simon Robinson was appointed Executive Editor of Reuters in October 2022. Previously, he served as Global Managing Editor, Newsroom.

He joined the news service in 2010 and ran investigations and enterprise reporting in Europe, Middle East and Africa for six years, editing award-winning series on Iran, Russia, corporate taxation, Greek banks and migration.

Between 2017 and 2019 he was Regional Editor for EMEA, running our single biggest region and overseeing everything from breaking news to budgets.

Between 1995 and 2010, Simon was a correspondent and then editor for Time magazine, reporting from more than 50 countries in Africa, South Asia, the Middle East and Europe. He has published short stories and wrote and produced an award-winning satirical movie about aid workers and journalists in Africa.

Tiffany Wu

Global Managing Editor/Editing, Curation and Publishing

Tiffany Wu is the Global Managing Editor/Editing, Curation and Publishing.

Prior to that, Tiffany was the Americas Editor, overseeing journalists across the United States, Canada and Latin America. She joined Reuters in 1998 as a reporter in Hong Kong covering the economy and debt market. She worked in Shanghai and Taiwan, where she was bureau chief, before moving to New York in 2006 to lead the U.S. technology, media and telecoms reporting team. In the last decade, Tiffany has run Americas companies news, worked as a top news editor, and headed the regional editing desk.

Alix Freedman

Global Head, Ethics and Standards, Reuters

Alix Freedman is the Global Head, Ethics and Standards for Reuters. Alix works closely with reporters and editors on major stories, final-reading many high signature pieces, and holding the company to the high standards set out in the Thomson Reuters Trust Principles. She also handles post-publication issues.

Prior to joining Reuters in 2011, Alix was Deputy Managing Editor and Page One Editor at The Wall Street Journal. Before that, she oversaw ethics and standards of high-impact stories in the paper and on the Dow Jones newswires.

Alix was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1996 for her investigative reporting on the tobacco industry, and has been honoured with numerous other accolades, including the George Polk Award and two Gerald Loeb Awards. She is a graduate of Harvard University with a bachelor’s degree in history and literature.

Mike Williams
Global Enterprise Editor, Reuters

Mike Williams is the Global Enterprise Editor at Reuters, a position he assumed in 2011. He developed the news agency’s global enterprise and investigative operation, a team of 16 editors and reporters in the U.S., Europe and Asia. In addition to generating its own work, the team is responsible for driving investigative and explanatory journalism in the agency’s news bureaus across the world, and for training Reuters reporters in enterprise reporting and writing techniques.

Before joining Reuters, Mike was with The Wall Street Journal for nearly 20 years, most recently as Deputy Managing Editor and Page-One Editor of the Wall Street Journal. In this role, he was one of three deputies to the editor-in-chief who managed the WSJ on a daily basis, where he was responsible for enterprise coverage and investigative projects for print and online, and for selecting and editing all daily news and features that ran on the front page of the Journal.

Mike joined The Wall Street Journal as a Japan Correspondent, based in Tokyo. He went on to hold the positions of Assistant Foreign Editor, Japan Bureau Chief, Southern Europe Bureau Chief & Global Energy Editor and Editor of The Wall Street Journal Europe while at the Journal.

Previously, Mike held positions at Business Tokyo Magazine, Asahi Shimbun and Japan Times. He is the winner of an Overseas Press Club Award, for a five-part series on the Japanese bureaucracy.

Jonathan Leff

Global Editor, Financial News Strategy

Jonathan Leff is Global Editor, Financial News Strategy at Reuters, responsible for maintaining and deepening the strategic partnership between the Editorial organization and Refinitiv, the financial services firm that is Reuters’ largest customer. He is also responsible for overseeing the strategic newsrooms in Bangalore, India, and Gdansk, Poland, which now produce thousands of alerts and stories a month in a dozen languages. A graduate of the University of California at Berkeley, Jonathan joined Reuters as a local correspondent in Lithuania in 1998; he moved to London two years later, the start of a 15-year career as an oil and commodity markets specialist. After running regional reporting teams from Singapore and New York, he went on to become Reuters global editor for commodities, overseeing coverage by a staff of more than 150 reporters, columnists and editors worldwide. He also raises chickens.