# Ben Werdmuller (@werd.io)

Profile: https://sifa.id/p/werd.io
Headline: Senior Director of Technology at ProPublica | Open Web, Open Source, Open Communities
Location: Greater Philadelphia
Website: https://werd.io

## About

Most technology extracts value from communities. I build technology that serves them instead. As Senior Director of Technology at ProPublica, I lead product engineering and enterprise technology for one of America's most important investigative newsrooms. Previously, I was the first CTO at The 19th, Head of Engineering at ForUsAll (leading a 22-person team), and Director of Investments at Matter Ventures, where I invested in media startups and taught venture design to innovation teams from organizations like the Associated Press and New York Times.

I co-founded Elgg, an open source social platform translated into 80 languages and used by governments (Australia, Netherlands, Canada), NGOs like Oxfam, and Fortune 500 companies. I built Latakoo, which enabled journalists to send footage from Mount Everest, Syria, and Air Force One back to their newsrooms. I co-founded Known, an open source publishing platform acquired by Medium.

I build teams around psychological safety, rapid experimentation, and transparent feedback. The best products emerge when engineers talk directly to the communities they serve, and when every team member can challenge decisions. I've learned what makes technology projects fail and what makes them succeed: human-centered design, sustainable business models, and teams that understand their communities.

I'm a board member of A New Social, an active participant in the open social web movement (Bluesky, Mastodon, ActivityPub), and hold two patents for media transfer systems in newsrooms.

## Experience

- **Senior Director of Technology at ProPublica** (2024 – present)
  I lead product engineering and enterprise technology for ProPublica, managing teams that build tools serving both journalists and millions of readers. My work includes building a robust technology strategy that supports the newsroom, developing AI-enhanced tools for investigative journalism, and ensuring technology decisions reflect our values and keep our sources and journalists safe. Recent initiatives include building encrypted tip management systems in partnership with the Lenfest Foundation, restructuring the technology organization for greater effectiveness, and establishing ProPublica's AI strategy, proving that newsrooms can adopt new tools without compromising privacy or editorial integrity.
- **Technology Consultant at ProPublica** (2023 – 2024)
  After some team changes at ProPublica, I stepped in to provide interim technology leadership, eventually moving into a full-time position.
- **Chief Technology Officer at The 19th** (2022 – 2023)
  As The 19th's first CTO, I built the technology team and defined its role within this mission-driven newsroom covering gender, politics, and policy. I hired and mentored engineers while serving as lead engineer myself, building website features and core infrastructure. I steered our migration to WordPress VIP, developed an equity-focused framework for technology decisions, and cultivated a team culture centered on transparency and psychological safety. As a senior leadership team member, I helped shape organizational strategy during a crucial period of the newsroom's evolution.
- **Head of Engineering at ForUsAll** (2019 – 2022)
  As Head of Engineering at ForUsAll, a retirement savings platform handling sensitive financial data for thousands of savers, I built and led a 22-person engineering team, serving as the company's de facto CTO. I transformed the engineering hiring process to prioritize equity and openness, established a culture of psychological safety, and led the company's security program from the ground up, shepherding ForUsAll through SOC 2 certification, implementing encrypted infrastructure including secure VPNs, and establishing digital security practices across the engineering organization. When ForUsAll pivoted to support alternative investments in retirement portfolios, I designed the secure technical architecture and third-party trading platform integrations that enabled the new business direction.
- **VP Product Development at Unlock Inc** (2018 – 2019)
  As Unlock's first employee and VP Product Development, I established the engineering team and product strategy for this open source protocol enabling membership on the open web. I built a cross-disciplinary team and contributed to the core Node, React/Redux, and Ethereum blockchain codebase, helping launch the foundational protocol for decentralized membership systems.
- **Director of Investments (San Francisco) at Matter.** (2017 – 2018)
  As west coast Director of Investments at Matter, a venture capital accelerator for media startups backed by the New York Times, Associated Press, KQED, and PRX, I was responsible for sourcing, evaluating, and investing in startups with the potential to transform media for good. I led the investment strategy, ultimately investing in 24 companies across diverse verticals and mentoring a total portfolio of 73 startups. I provided hands-on guidance on fundraising, technical decision-making, sustainable business models, and building strong team cultures, drawing on my experience as both a successful founder and engineering leader.
  
  I co-taught the product design and strategy side of Matter's accelerator program: a 5-month intensive course on venture design thinking for early-stage media startups and innovation teams from our media partners. My students included founders working on audience engagement, revenue diversification, and technology platforms, as well as teams from the New York Times, Associated Press, and other major organizations tackling strategic transformation challenges. I taught human-centered design, rapid prototyping, sustainable business model development, and the frameworks that separate successful media ventures from those that fail.
- **Senior Engineer at Medium.com** (2016 – 2017)
  After Medium acquired Known, I joined as a Senior Engineer on the publications team. I built features supporting major platforms like The Ringer and ThinkProgress while advocating for open web principles within a centralized platform. I developed export tools and custom domain support to give users more control over their content, co-founded an Openness Circle to champion standards like Do Not Track, and facilitated discussions about Medium's editorial approach during the contentious 2016 election.
- **Co-Founder at Known, Inc** (2014 – 2016)
  I co-founded Known, an open source publishing platform for mobile-first communities that prioritized individual content ownership over platform control: an early entry in the movement toward user-owned content on the open web. I conceived and built the software, established the open source community, and secured Matter Ventures funding. Our platform powered communities at KQED, Davidson College, and Harvard University; KQED's implementation won a NAMLE media literacy award. Known was acquired by Medium in 2016, and the open source platform continues to exist today.
- **Chief Technology Officer at Latakoo** (2010 – 2014)
  As Latakoo's first employee, I served as Chief Technology Officer and helped define the company's vision: enabling TV journalists to transmit video from anywhere with an internet connection, transcoded to their newsroom's specifications. I led all product and technology development, building the core platform from the ground up. I also conceived and developed Latakoo Hub, a co-located enterprise product that became central to the company's profitability.
  
  The platform I built empowered journalists to report from extraordinary locations
  \- including Mount Everest, Syria, the Sochi Olympics, and Air Force One
  \- serving major newsrooms including NBC News, Nexstar Media Group, and Spectrum News. I co-authored two patents for the video compression and transfer technology. I remain a member of Latakoo's Board of Directors.
- **Geek in Residence at Edinburgh Festivals** (2010 – 2011)
  •	Designed and constructed a data API for the Edinburgh Festivals, collectively the world's largest arts festival.
  • Collaborated with disparate arts organizations to address their digital requirements.
  • Co-hosted a hackathon targeting Scotland's creative sector.
- **Co-founder / CTO at Elgg** (2004 – 2009)
  I co-founded Elgg and built one of the first open source white-label social networking platforms designed to serve communities rather than extract from them. I wrote the initial codebase, led technical development, and built an open source community that translated Elgg into over 80 languages and contributed hundreds of developers. The platform empowered diverse communities: Spain's anti-austerity movement used it for organizing, the Australian, Canadian, and Dutch governments deployed it for public sector collaboration, and Ivy League universities, NGOs like Oxfam, and Fortune 500 companies adopted it for their communities. Elgg remains in active use worldwide today.
  
  Dave Tosh and I founded Curverider in 2006 to provide commercial services for Elgg. As CTO, I led technical decisions while working with Dave on business strategy. We bootstrapped to profitability: MIT became our first client for the first OpenCourseWare platform, and the University of Brighton partnered with us to launch the world's first campus-wide social network. Our work was covered in the Guardian, ZDNet, and TechCrunch and won InfoWorld's Best in Open Source Software award. We built a hosted platform competing with Ning and created Explode, a semi-distributed network that pioneered concepts now central to federated platforms. After raising venture investment, Curverider was acquired by Thematic Networks in 2010.
- **Web administrator at Saïd Business School** (2005 – 2006)
- **Web Developer at The University of Edinburgh** (2003 – 2004)
- **System Operator at Daily Information** (1994 – 1997)

## Education

- **Stanford University**
- **University of Edinburgh** — BSc (Hons), Computer Science

## Skills

- Open Source Platforms
- Computer Science
- Product Design
- Engineering Leadership
- Startups
- Open-Source Software
- Organizational Strategy
- User-centered Design
- Technical Leadership
- Start-up Leadership
- Fundraising
- Start-up Ventures
- Node.js
- Software Architecture
- Web3
- Business Planning
- Technology Leadership
- Technology Strategy
- Security
- Early-Stage Startups
- Product Vision
- Strategic Thinking
- Web Development
- Open Source
- Web Applications
- Start-ups
- Entrepreneurship
- Business Strategy
- Mobile Applications
- Web Project Management
- Social Media Marketing
- Software Engineering
- Cloud Computing
- Strategy
- User Experience
- Software Development
- Business Development
- Project Management
- Due Diligence
- Valuation
- Venture Capital
- MySQL
- HTML 5
- HTML5
- Amazon Web Services (AWS)
- Enterprise Software
- JavaScript
- Public Speaking
- Management
- Leadership
- Design Thinking
- Social Networking
- Elgg
- APIs
- Web Standards
- Social Web
- Product Evangelism
- Social Software
- Venture Financing
- Digital Media
- Strategic Partnerships
- Blogging
- Software Design
- Business Analysis
- Cross-functional Team Leadership
- Agile Methodologies
- Product Strategy
- Product Development
- User Experience (UX)
- Product Management
- Social Media

## Certifications

- SOE-XETECH0001 - Ethics, Technology and Public Policy for Practitioners — Stanford Online (https://digitalcredential.stanford.edu/check/D4083431D862C391FBAA2678DF39A14333E4214C6DA7FBCA560A8A8592652021cVc4aWFVcEhrdTZ4WXlKMGNSMWg1L0taeVJqSlBtM0kxQTV3SkMvODhwczJTRWdl)

## Publications

- The new, Tailwind-based theme is so much ... — idno.werd.io (https://idno.werd.io/2026/the-new-tailwind-based-theme-is-so-much)
- Inkwell is a very nicely implemented fediverse ... — idno.werd.io (https://idno.werd.io/2026/inkwell-is-a-very-nicely-implemented-fediverse)
- I'm testing something quite exciting. — idno.werd.io (https://idno.werd.io/2026/im-testing-something-quite-exciting)
- This is really exciting. — werd.leaflet.pub (https://werd.leaflet.pub/3lzquwvctcc2r)
- Instant HTML5 Geolocation How-To — Packt Publishing (http://www.packtpub.com/html5-geolocation-how-to/book)
- Handbook of Research on ePortfolios — Idea Group (https://books.google.com/books?id=P3tJSOXYiQ0C&dq=handbook+of+eportfolios+werdmuller&source=gbs_navlinks_s)

## Other profiles

- website: https://werd.io
- bsky: https://bsky.app/profile/werd.io
- github: https://github.com/benwerd
- activitypub: https://werd.social/@ben