Maziar Bahari - Founder and President of the Board of Directors

Maziar Bahari is an Iranian-Canadian journalist and filmmaker who founded IranWire in 2013 and Journalism for Change the following year. He was a reporter for Newsweek from 1998 to 2011, largely working in Tehran; but in 2009, after reporting on the Iran presidential election crisis, Bahari was jailed for 118 days in solitary confinement in Tehran’s Evin Prison. He was released after a successful international campaign. Bahari’s book “Then They Came for Me” told the story of his incarceration and in 2014 was adapted as the feature film Rosewater by Jon Stewart.

Bahari has produced documentaries and news reports for broadcasters around the world including the BBC, Channel 4, HBO, Discovery, Canal+ and NHK. His films include Paint! No Matter What (1999), Football, Iranian Style (2001), and Along Came a Spider (2002), Mohammad and the Matchmaker (1994), Targets: Reporters in Iraq (2005), Greetings from Sadr City (2007), Online Ayatollah (2008), The Fall of a Shah (2009), An Iranian Odyssey (2010) and To Light a Candle (2014).

Today, Bahari is the publisher of IranWire and directs projects such as the Sardari Project, Education Is Not A Crime, and Paint the Change. Bahari graduated with a degree in communications from Concordia University in Montreal in 1993.

Mark Whitehouse - Co-FOUNDER and Executive Director. Board of Directors (Ex Officio)

Mark manages JFC’s portfolio of programs and business operations. Before co-founding JFC in 2014, he spent 17 years at IREX, including four years as Vice President, where he led its media and civil society practices for a $25 million annual project portfolio. Whitehouse has served on numerous NGO boards for media development organizations and served on the steering committee for the Global Forum for Media Development. Earlier in his career, Whitehouse served as Coordinator of USSR programs at the American Council of Teachers of Russian, was a research assistant at the Carter Center's Commission of Radio and Television Policy, and served as a contractor for USAID. He graduated with a BA, Magna Cum Laude, from Georgetown University, received an MA in Russian and East European Studies from Georgetown, an MA in Political Science from Emory University, and conducted research at the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Ethnology.

Michael de Villiers- Treasurer, Board of Directors

Michael de Villiers has served as the Director of Erim International, an independent, French not-for-profit, since its founding in 2004. He has grown Erim into an innovative development organization with expertise working in support of human rights, freedom of expression, civil society, and education in closed and authoritarian societies and states in conflict in Eurasia, the Middle East, and Africa. De Villiers has been active in international development for more than 20 years as a journalism trainer, project director, and non-profit executive. Prior to his international development career, de Villiers worked as a journalist for the BBC World Service and the CBC.

Ali Arab - Board of Directors

Ali Arab is an Associate Professor of Statistics in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics of Georgetown University. His academic research is focused on statistical modeling for problems in the environment, ecology, epidemiology of infectious and rare diseases, and science and human rights. He frequently publishes in peer-reviewed scientific journals. He also frequently publishes in academic and popular outlets on topics related to human rights. He is actively involved in promoting science and human rights including promoting the role of human rights in science education, and organizing student activities related to science and human rights. Ali serves as the American Statistical Association representative to the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Science and Human Rights Coalition. Ali has served as a member of the Board of Directors of Amnesty International USA.

Mehrangiz Kar - Board of Directors

Mehrengiz Kar is a prominent Iranian lawyer, human rights activist, women’s rights activist, and author of the book Crossing the Red Line, as well as many articles. Kar was a Radcliffe Fellow at Harvard University and in the 2005/06 academic year was at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government. She has also been recognized as a Scholar at Risk through an international network of universities and colleges working to promote academic freedom and to defend the human rights of scholars worldwide. In 2002, the U.S. First Lady, Laura Bush, gave her the National Endowment for Democracy's Democracy award. She is the widow of Siamak Pourzand, a fellow Iranian dissident and former prisoner of conscience who committed suicide on 29 April 2011 after a long period of torture and imprisonment.

Eric Novotny - Board of Directors

Eric J. Novotny has an established record of successful practice and academic leadership in international communication, digital technologies, cyber security policy, and international business. He has extensive expertise in the foreign policy, development, and intelligence communities in government service.  He brings to JFC a thorough knowledge in the operation of non-governmental organizations, including fund-raising, private philanthropy, and program management and experience as a senior management executive in international ventures with several multinational corporations that required extensive intercultural understanding. He is currently director of the graduate program in U.S. Foreign Policy & National Security at The American University. He previously served as a senior advisor for digital media and cyber security to the US Department of State, Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs. Novotny holds a Ph.D. and M.A. in Government and International Relations from Georgetown University and a B.A. in Political Science, Mathematics, and Computer Science from Colorado State University.

Adrienne Van Heteren - Board of Directors

Adrienne van Heteren is the co-founder and director of the Small Media Foundation in London, supporting the free flow of information in closed societies. Adrienne has an extensive and successful track record in media. In 1993 she was one of the founders of Press Now. She has worked in management positions at Open Society Institute’s Network Media Program, the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, USAID and BBC Media Action across a range of media development projects. She has worked in the former Yugoslavia, Serbia, Kosovo, Hungary and Russia, and west Asia.​ During the Balkan Wars, Adrienne was Director of Development and External Relations for the oppositional underground radio station B92. In late 1997, she worked for OSI Network Media Program from Hungary where she managed projects in over 28 countries, including a special assistance program for independent media in Russia. In 1999 she joined the UN/OSCE mission to Kosovo as Head of Independent Media Development and Donor Relations, working to restore Radio Television Kosovo and rehabilitate the terrestrial transmission network. In 2002 Adrienne moved to Moscow where she worked with the Glasnost Defense Foundation. Following, she joined IWPR in London as Director of Development. In 2006 she helped set up Jadid Media, a multimedia journalism development organisation. Adrienne joined the BBC World Service Trust in 2007 to manage its development activities in west Asia