New Web Summit CEO named as former Wikimedia boss Katherine Maher

The board of directors of Web Summit, due to take place in Lisbon next month, has announced the appointment of Katherine Maher, a former chief executive officer and executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation, as its new CEO, succeeding Paddy Cosgrave, who resigned earlier this month in the wake of a storm his comments on the Israel-Hamas conflict created. In a letter released on the Web Summit website, Maher said: “I am excited to announce that I am joining Web Summit as CEO, because I believe in Web Summit’s mission to connect people and ideas that change the world. Our immediate task at hand is returning the focus to what we do best: facilitating discussions among everyone involved in technological progress. Web Summit is scheduled to run in Lisbon from November 13-16, with 2,600 startups and around 70,000 participants expected.