Maria A. Ressa is a Filipino journalist, and the CEO and Executive Editor of Rappler, a social news network.

Ms. Ressa has been a journalist in Asia for nearly 30 years, most of them as CNN’s bureau chief in Manila (1987-1995) then Jakarta (1995-2005). She was CNN’s lead investigative reporter focusing on terrorism in South-East Asia and wrote Seeds of Terror: An Eyewitness Account of al-Qaeda’s Newest Center of Operations in South-East (Free Press, 2003).

In 2005, she took the helm of ABS-CBN News and Current affairs, for six years determining strategic direction and managing more than 1,000 journalists for the largest multi-platform news operation in the Philippines.

She has taught courses in Politics and the Press in Southeast Asia for her alma mater, Princeton University, and in broadcast journalism for the University of the Philippines. She worked on her second book, From Bin Laden to Facebook as author-in-residence and Senior Fellow at the International Centre for Political Violence & Terrorism Research in Singapore. She is also the South-East Asia Visiting Scholar at CORE Lab at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California.