I was Global Voices’ executive director from 2008-2024. I am also a photographer, media artist and writer known for long-term explorations of societies experiencing conflict and urban change, and collaborative projects with communities to depict their own experiences and control their own media systems. I am the author of White Road, a two-volume monograph about Siberia and Central Asia (Steidl, 2012). My work is collected in the National Gallery of Art and the Corcoran Gallery of Art.

I have been a Kluge Fellow in digital studies at the Library of Congress in Washington D.C., a Fellow at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, a Senior Fellow at the United States Institute of Peace, a Visiting Fellow at Bournemouth University’s Center for Excellence in Media Practice, and a Fellow at the Logan Nonfiction Program. I was a lecturer and visiting artist at the Corcoran College of Art + Design. I am president of the board of The Engine Room, and was the board chair of the Open Society Foundations’ Documentary Photography Project. For over a decade I was a vice president and regional director for the media development organization Internews. There I worked in dozens of countries in Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union and Asia on media programs to support communities undergoing conflict, political transition and humanitarian crises, producing television and radio programs, running media education and training courses, and supporting legal advocacy for digital and media rights.