Fireside Chat with Nobel Prize Laureate Maria Ressa

The Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship at MIT and the MIT Initiative on Digital Economy (IDE) invite you to join a special event with Maria Ressa, the Philippines’ first Nobel Prize Laureate and founder of Rappler. Rappler is an online news platform that began with a small team of 12 young reporters and developers and grew to be a first-of-its-kind media platform through the power of social media. Maria and Rappler have openly spoken against the Philippine government’s extrajudicial killings, earning the ire of the administration, resulting in the platform’s shutdown by the Philippines’ Securities and Exchange Commission in 2018 as well as multiple legal cases filed against her and her colleagues.

In conversation with MIT IDE Director, Sinan Aral, Maria will share reflections on her journey as an entrepreneur and advocate. She will speak about the impetus of founding Rappler and how she and the company have used principled entrepreneurship to leverage their platform for social change, what she attributes their success to, and what lessons she has learned as a leader and public figure.