Kathleen Carroll

Kathleen Carroll is an experienced journalism leader, local news champion and fierce advocate for the rights of journalists to work freely and safely. 

For more than 14 years, she was executive editor and senior vice president of The Associated Press, the world’s largest independent news agency. As the top news executive (2002-2016), she was responsible for all coverage from AP’s journalists, based in 260 locations across 106 countries.   

In 2025, she joined the inaugural board of the Associated Press Fund for Journalism. She also chairs the board of the Montclair Local, a startup-nonprofit news organization in New Jersey. Carroll also has served on the advisory boards of the Edmond & Lily Safra Center for Ethics and the Shorenstein Center for Media, Politics and Public Policy, both at Harvard.  

She served for 15 years on board of the Committee to Protect Journalists, the non-profit organization that works on behalf of journalists across the globe, the last 6 years as board chair. She also served for nine-years on the board of the Pulitzer Prizes, the last year as co-chair.   

Earlier in her career, Carroll led the Knight Ridder Washington Bureau and the company’s international bureaus during coverage of several wars and the 9/11 attacks on the United States. She has been an editor in The AP’s bureaus in Washington, DC., California, New Jersey and Texas, as well as the International Herald Tribune in Paris, the Mercury News in San Jose, California, and The Dallas Morning News in her hometown.