Welcoming Goli Sheikholeslami to Patreon’s Board of Directors
I’m excited to announce that Goli Sheikholeslami, CEO of Chicago Public Media, the home of Chicago’s NPR news station WBEZ Chicago, and former GM of the Washington Post Digital, has joined Patreon’s Board of Directors! YES!
With decades of executive operations experience in the media world, Goli will be an awesome guiding light for Patreon. Previously, she was an executive at both Conde Nast and Time Warner, and is currently a board member of NPR. As Patreon scales, having more operational expertise on our board will be vital in establishing strong and effective mentorship for me as CEO and governance for Patreon.
In addition to her operational wisdom, Goli is an unmatched expert in Membership, what it means, and where it’s going for digital media. At WBEZ, Goli has grown their membership over 30% during her tenure at the company. Every time I speak with her, I learn about new ways that arts and media organizations can find and keep paying contributors. I’m psyched to continue learning from her experience running media companies and building successful membership programs.
Perhaps most importantly, Goli is Creator First. She has witnessed the ad-driven web’s effect on the arts, on journalism, and on media. She feels an urgency and passion to solve the discrepancy between a) what a creator is actually worth, and b) their $28 share of ad revenue generated by their 85k monthly blog readers. Goli gets it. And she shares our longing for a better financial mechanism in the engine room of the web.
One final note — I’d like to thank Thrive Capital and Patreon’s whole board for giving us a chance to open up an independent seat on Patreon’s board. While finalizing the terms of our last round of financing, Thrive agreed to elect an independent director instead of taking an additional seat for themselves. This decoupling of the fundraise from the election of a board member gave Patreon the time we needed to run a thoughtful search for a new director, allowing us to find someone with a fresh, non-tech centric, and distinct perspective on our business and mission.
So without further ado: welcome, Goli!!! Thank you for joining Patreon in our mission to get creators paid. Here we GO!
Jack
