RAID THE FRIDGE: Rappler

How is technology changing society?

Specifically, how is it changing the way we consume media: shaping our perceptions, influencing the decisions we make or the actions we take, subsequently defining societal outcomes that impact us all.

Let’s find out from Maria Ressa, founder and chief executive officer of Rappler, a tech startup founded in 2012 to deliver online news to consumers.

As an advocate of the transformative powers of media and technology for communities, Maria is keen to engage the #startupPH community in a conversation about technology’s impact on society, and what journalism could look like in the future.

So come over and help us empty our fridge --- this will be our 51st edition of Raid The Fridge, and it'll be awesome to hang out with you, swap #startupPH stories, and discuss (over a beer or two) stuff we heard from our speaker.

See you,
The Kickstart Team

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About the Speaker

Maria has been a journalist in Asia for nearly 30 years, most of them as CNN’s bureau chief in Manila then Jakarta. She became CNN’s lead investigative reporter focusing on terrorism in Southeast Asia and wrote "Seeds of Terror: An Eyewitness Account of al-Qaeda’s Newest Center of Operations in Southeast Asia" (Free Press, 2003). The book was the first from the region documenting the growth of Jemaah Islamiyah and its links to Al-Qaeda.

In 1987, Maria was one of the founders of independent production company, Probe. In 2005, she took the helm of ABS-CBN News and Current affairs, for 6 years managing more than 1,000 journalists for the largest multi-platform news operation in the Philippines. Her work aimed to redefine journalism by combining traditional broadcast, new media and mobile phone technology for social change.

She taught courses in politics and media for her alma mater, Princeton University, as well as in broadcasting at the University of the Philippines. Her latest book, "From Bin Laden to Facebook," is part of her work as the Author-in-Residence and Senior Fellow at the International Centre for Political Violence & Terrorism Research in Singapore. She was named the Southeast Asia Visiting Scholar at CORE Lab at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California.

Despite documenting some of the worst disasters and uprisings in Southeast Asia, she believes in the goodness of human nature and in the transformative powers of media and technology.