As Mozilla’s Chief Innovation Officer, Katharina serves as the senior executive broadly responsible for fostering and enriching our culture of open innovation, internally and externally.

 Katharina has a background that includes more than a decade of new business growth and technological innovation in media and journalism, most recently as CEO at Spiegel Online, the online division of one of Europe’s most influential magazines. Prior to that, Katharina was Editor-in-Chief and CEO at WAZ Media Group, where she completely reimagined the way local and regional journalism could be done, launching a new portal “Der Westen” based heavily upon user participation, integrated social media, and one of the earliest with a focus on location-based data in journalism. 

Katharina studied law (with a focus on humanitarian law) and journalism in Hamburg and Lausanne. She previously worked at the UN Center for Human Rights.