Shari announced her retirement from the Tor Project at the end of February, and the search for our next Executive Director is already over. We're thrilled to announce our next ED, Isabela Bagueros.

Isa joined the Tor Project as Project Manager in 2015 and has led teams in collaborative strategy building and roadmapping unprecedented at the organization. She also leads Tor’s UX team in implementing critical usability improvements and is leading an overhaul of Tor’s website.

“Isa’s contributions to Tor are too many to name here,” said Shari Steele, Tor’s current Executive Director who was brought on in 2015 to make the organization more operationally sound. “She brings global experience and perspective to privacy and censorship issues, and I could not be more confident in her ability to lead the organization into its next phase of growth and sustainability.”

Thinking of the user first has always been a priority for Isa, and during her three years with the organization, the scope of her vision for Tor has expanded to include the health of the organization and network. “I think any person on the planet should have access to the Tor network and enjoy the privacy and security it provides,” said Isa. “That means we need a healthy and scalable network and a strong and diverse organization to support that. I’m looking forward to seeing Tor gain global recognition for the privacy protections and censorship circumvention it provides.”

Now in a transition phase, Isabela will officially begin her position as Executive Director after she hires her replacement Project Manager and gets up to speed on the requirements of the job. Shari will continue as Executive Director until Isabela transitions and then plans to move into a consulting role through the end of the year. Shari will join the Tor Project Board of Directors beginning January 2019.

Congratulations, Isa! :D

About Isabela Bagueros

Isabela Bagueros joined the Tor Project as Project Manager in 2015, after working as Product Manager for International and Growth at Twitter for four years. Isabela has been part of the free software community since the late 90s, and in 2007 she co-founded and worked as Latin America Project Manager for North by South, a startup from San Francisco focused on free software projects. Isabela was also part of Brazil’s Federal Government Free Software initiative, working in 2005 on the Ministry of Communications digital inclusion project and participating in 2006 on a project to migrate the IT of the Presidential Palace of Brazil to free software. Isa will give the keynote address at CryptoRave, May 4th in São Paulo, Brazil.

About Shari Steele

Shari Steele has been the Executive Director of the Tor Project since December 2015, coming to Tor after serving as Executive Director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) for 15 years. Prior to the ED role, Shari was EFF’s legal director from 1992 to 2000, where she spoke widely about civil liberties law in newly emerging technologies. A graduate of Widener University School of Law, Shari later served as a teaching fellow at Georgetown University Law Center, where she earned an LL.M. degree in Advocacy. Shari has been on EFF’s Board of Directors since 2000 and will join the Tor Project Board of Directors in January 2019.

About the Tor Project

The Tor Project, Inc., is a 501(c)(3) organization headquartered in Seattle with paid staff and contractors of around 35 engineers and operational support people, plus many volunteers all over the world. Tor develops free and open source software for privacy and freedom online, protecting people from tracking, surveillance, and censorship. The Tor Project’s mission is to advance human rights and freedoms by creating and deploying free and open source anonymity and privacy technologies, support their unrestricted availability and use, and further their scientific and popular understanding.

For more information, contact Steph Whited at steph at torproject.org.