Management And Governance

Jeffrey Gedmin

Acting President

Dr. Jeffrey Gedmin is co-founder and editor-in-chief of American Purpose, the magazine and media venture. He is former President/CEO of the London-based Legatum Institute. Gedmin served for four years as President/CEO of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, prior to which he served as President/CEO of the Aspen Institute in Berlin. Previously, he was Resident Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C., and Executive Director of the New Atlantic Initiative.

Gedmin is the author/editor of several books on Germany and European security. He also served as co-executive producer for two major PBS documentaries: “The Germans, Portrait of a New Nation” (1995) and “Spain’s 9/11 and the Challenge of Radical Islam in Europe” (2007). He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and serves on several advisory boards, including the Institute for State Effectiveness, the Justice for Journalists Foundation, the Tocqueville Conversations, and the Institute for Current World Affairs. Together with former U.S. Ambassador to the Czech Republic Norm Eisen, Gedmin is co-chair of the Transatlantic Democracy Working Group, hosted by the German Marshall Fund of the United States.

Gedmin left the Legatum Institute in early 2014.

He is currently a Research Council Member at the National Endowment for Democracy, senior fellow at Georgetown University and at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue. He earned his M.A. in German Area Studies from American University. He received his Ph.D. from Georgetown University in German Area Studies and Linguistics.

Gedmin began his appointment as Acting President of RFE/RL on July 3, 2023.

Mark Kontos

Vice President and Chief Financial Officer / Treasurer

Mark Kontos was selected as RFE/RL Chief Financial Officer (CFO) and Treasurer of the Corporation in February 2020, and is based in Washington, DC. Prior to his appointment, Kontos served for twelve years as Senior Vice President, CFO, and Treasurer of MITRE Corporation, which operates a series of U.S. Federally Funded Research and Development Centers (FFRDCs) that serve the public interest through systems engineering and applied sciences for large-scale, complex problems of importance for defense, intelligence and civilian agencies of the US government. Kontos has also served as CFO of Battelle Memorial Institute and AK Steel Corporation, and in senior level roles at Citibank/Citigroup. Kontos earned a B.A. in Political Science from Beloit College and an MBA in Finance from the University of Chicago.

Nicola Careem

Vice President and Head of the News Division

Nicola Careem is a multi-award-winning journalist with over two decades of experience and a track record of facilitating independent and trusted news in places of conflict and tension. She has covered six wars from the ground -- including leading teams in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, the Palestinian territories, and Yemen. She led the BBC’s South Asia operation from New Delhi, in charge of Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, and Nepal. She oversaw internationally acknowledged and agenda-setting work during an unprecedented time of turbulence, steering the organization through the conflict in Afghanistan; increased military escalations between India and Pakistan; and unparalleled attacks on journalistic freedoms. As South Asia Bureau Chief, she was in charge of the BBC’s English language services from multiple bureaus across the continent, working in close collaboration with numerous language services teams, including BBC Dari, Pashto, and Urdu. She ran the BBC’s operation from Kabul as Afghanistan fell to the Taliban and the organization’s coverage of the devastating COVID-19 outbreak in India. Most recently she played a pivotal role at CNN as their Director of Coverage during the first six months of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Benjamin Herman

Secretary and General Counsel

Benjamin Herman is RFE/RL's General Counsel and the Secretary of the Corporation. He graduated from Brown University in 1991 with a degree in Russian Studies, earned a Master's degree in Czech Language and Literature from UC Berkeley in 1994, and graduated from Stanford Law School in 1998. After receiving his law degree, Herman spent four years as an associate at the New York office of Sullivan & Cromwell before joining RFE/RL in 2002.

Tanya Youngberg

Assistant Secretary and Deputy General Counsel

Tanya Youngberg has served as RFE/RL’s deputy general counsel and assistant secretary of the corporation since June 2022. Youngberg previously worked for eight years as a litigator at Williams & Connolly and clerked for two federal judges. She was a language analyst at the United States Department of Defense before her legal career. Youngberg holds a B.A. from Brown University in Slavic Studies and International Relations, an M.A. from Harvard University in Regional Studies (Russia, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia), and a J.D. from Yale Law School.