Bina Venkataraman
GUEST SPEAKER
Bina Venkataraman is a media executive, journalist, and science & tech policy expert whose leadership roles have spanned The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, The Broad Institute of Harvard & MIT, and the Obama White House. She is the author of The Optimist’s Telescope: Thinking Ahead in a Reckless Age (Riverhead, 2019), named a top business book by The Financial Times and a best book of the year by National Public Radio.
From 2019-2022, Bina served as Editorial Page Editor of The Boston Globe, overseeing the news organization’s opinion coverage and editorial board, including two Pulitzer finalist series in editorial writing. She then became The Washington Post's inaugural columnist of the future and the first Editor-at-Large for strategy and innovation on the Post’s masthead, a role she held until August 2025.
Bina has taught in the program on science, technology, and society at MIT and the Harvard Kennedy School, and worked in the Obama White House on innovation. She currently serves on the Advisory Board of Harvard’s Shorenstein Center on the Media, Politics, and Public Policy; on the Getty Museum's PST ART advisory council; and on the MIT Corporation’s Visiting Committee on the Humanities. She served as a juror for the 2021 and the 2024 Goldsmith Prizes for Investigative Reporting.
