Caro Kriel

Caro has overall responsibility for the delivery of the foundation’s programmes and budgets, and advising its board of trustees on strategy. Her background is in the news industry – both as a journalist and as a manager of international news organisations.

Caro joined the foundation in June 2021 from CNN where she was Director of Coverage, EMEA – overseeing television and digital coverage internationally.

She was previously head of international news at Sky News and held leadership positions at Associated Press (AP), as Europe news director based in London, and as news director for Russia, based in Moscow. She also headed AP’s international video division for six years.

Caro has led award-winning teams covering major international news stories including conflicts, natural disasters and terror attacks on every continent for more than 20 years including the Boxing Day Tsunami, the death of Nelson Mandela in her native South Africa, and three changes of the papacy in Rome.

While based in Moscow, as one of AP’s first regional hub leaders delivering multi-format content, she oversaw coverage of the 2014 Ukraine war and secured the news cooperative’s first interview with president Vladimir Putin.

Over the past two decades Caro has managed large-scale transformation programmes to adapt content for digital audiences, restructuring projects, increases in multi-skilling, and workflow management changes gaining a deep knowledge of the commercial media landscape as the focus moves to digital.

Under her leadership, Sky News won two BAFTA TV awards: in 2020 for coverage of the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong, and in 2021 for ‘Inside Idlib’ – a series of reports from Sky News’ Special Correspondent, Alex Crawford, who gained rare access to this war-ravaged city in Syria.

During her tenure at AP, the team won a World Press Photo award in 2017, and three Royal Television Society awards as well as numerous nominations.

Caro holds BA and Honours degrees in Journalism from Stellenbosch University and is a Fellow of the Punch Sulzberger Program at the Graduate School of Journalism, Columbia University, New York. She is a regular judge for the UK’s Royal Television Society’s Journalism Awards and mentors young journalists and women leaders in newsrooms.