WEB SUMMIT HAS announced its new CEO after founder Paddy Cosgrave stepped down from the role.
Katherine Maher has been appointed to head the company. Maher was previously the CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation, the company behind Wikipedia, and is the current chair of the instant messaging app Signal.
She replaces Cosgrave after a tumultuous few weeks in which several high profile multinational companies withdrew from participating in the annual tech conference.
Amazon, Meta, Google, Siemens, Intel, Stripe and others all announced they would not be appearing at the event, which will take place in Lisbon next month.
The slew of withdrawals came after Cosgrave made comments about the war between Israel and Hamas.
Cosgrave earlier this month said on X, formerly Twitter, he was “shocked at the rhetoric and actions of so many Western leaders & governments”, who have supported Israel. “War crimes are war crimes even when committed by allies.”
He later condemned the attacks by Hamas and expressed his “hope for peaceful reconciliation”.
However, the Israeli ambassador to Portugal, Dor Shapira, described the statement as “outrageous”, and said he had written to the Mayor of Lisbon informing him that Israeli companies will not be attending this year’s Web Summit.
New CEO
Cosgrave’s resignation was seen as a way to limit the damage to the company’s reputation. As well as the central summit itself, the company hosts a series of events throughout the year and employs over 200 people.
In a statement this morning, Katherine Maher said that today Web Summit’s purpose had been “overshadowed by the personal comments of the event’s founder and former CEO, Paddy Cosgrave” and that now it was “entering its next phase”.
“I am excited to announce that I am joining Web Summit as CEO, because I believe in Web Summit’s mission to connect people and ideas that change the world,” she said.
“Our immediate task at hand is returning the focus to what we do best: facilitating discussions among everyone involved in technological progress.”
Maher said the company was now focused on delivering next month’s event in Lisbon and that it the coming months “we will take up the charge of setting up our global events for an even brighter future”.
“In a present where technology is interwoven into every aspect of our lives, and in a future where it represents our greatest hope and our greatest disruptor, Web Summit’s role as a place for connection and conversation is more urgent now than ever,” she said.
In two weeks’ time our team will bring up to 70,000 people together in Lisbon to enhance meaningful connections and enable dialogue to continue – and to help you shape the future.
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