TARA FRANCIS CHAN
Newsroom Leader. Strategic Thinker.
Tara Francis Chan is the Operations Director & Managing Editor of The Appeal, an award-winning nonprofit newsroom covering criminal justice, where she leads operational and editorial strategy. She is especially proud of the newsroom’s unique policies and practices as well as its work with incarcerated freelance writers.
Tara has worked for national and international publications, overseeing editorial operations and overhauling workflows. Previously, she was the Senior Editor for Politics at Newsweek and launched Business Insider’s international news desk as the Associate Global News Editor. For four years, she oversaw a leading Australian features magazine, where she expanded coverage of social justice issues. She has created national conferences, edited a bestselling book, and was a finalist for Young Australian Journalist of the Year.
Tara is a speaker and teacher on innovative operations leadership and centering care and mental health for journalists. Her work has received national recognition. She has spoken at the National Press Club, American Press Institute, Online News Association, Institute for Nonprofit News, SRCCON, and the Women in Journalism workshop, and her effort to create a resilient and democratic newsroom was a finalist for the Local Independent Online News Awards. She is a 2022 Poynter Leadership Academy for Women in Media alum, a 2024 INN Emerging Leaders Council member and wrote a monthly column for the Reynolds Journalism Institute. She is currently in the Executive Program in News Leadership and Innovation at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY.
Tara’s love for corny Hallmark films, and her silly attempt at watching all 31 new holiday releases, is captured in her newsletter A Very Judgy Christmas.
A former science nerd, Tara has worked on incredibly cool science communication projects in London, Moscow, Sydney, Edinburgh, and Abu Dhabi. Tara graduated from the University of New South Wales, Australia, where she was a William McIlrath Rural Scholar and studied communications. She is now based in New York.
