Zach Verdin becomes KF’s second Executive Director and Travis Rich steps into new Research and Development role

Dear KF Community,

I’ve made the decision, in unanimous consensus with the rest of the leadership team, to shift from Executive Director of Knowledge Futures to Head of R&D. Zach Verdin, former Head of Growth and Innovation, will be taking up the mantle of Executive Director.

PubPub and Knowledge Futures began from a simple desire to better share knowledge. What began as assisting graduate students to more effectively communicate their research has expanded to supporting thousands of communities in producing, curating, and publishing knowledge. Throughout this journey, I’ve been continually amazed by and grateful for the dedication of our staff and collaborators. Their eagerness to contribute to our mission has created a culture of focused commitment to our community.

In particular, I want to take a moment to express my deepest appreciation for the other members of the leadership team: Catherine, Gabe, and Zach. I feel fortunate that we’ve been able to consistently operate as a close-knit partnership, and I’m incredibly grateful that they’ve done so in a way that has made it so easy to be aligned, trusting, and productive.

During our last leadership meeting in February, as we looked ahead to the next 18 months, a clear vision emerged for how the four of us can position ourselves to best serve the mission and evolving needs of Knowledge Futures as it grows and pursues sustainability. A key piece of that vision is my decision to pass the torch of Executive Director to Zach Verdin and step into the role of Head of R&D, effective as of our April 2024 board meeting.

This decision stems from the recognition that we require a renewed focus on the technical vision that initially inspired our creation. By prioritizing R&D, we are creating a space for rapid idea development, prototyping, and discovery which allows us to say yes to more ideas, explore possibilities more quickly, and fully commit to the iterative, collaborative process that leads to transformative advancements. Concurrently, we need a leader who is energized by driving our organizational vision and goals, and Zach is exceptionally suited to this role.

Zach has been my partner in fundraising, strategy, and sustainability modeling over the past few years, positioning us perfectly for this transition. We’re three months into this new configuration and it’s evident that this change has been decidedly positive for both the organization and each of us as individuals. I have profound respect and admiration for the way Zach has embraced his new role, and I’m confident that this decision will continue to benefit Knowledge Futures, its staff, and our community.

To the Knowledge Futures Community,

The opportunity to serve as the Executive Director of Knowledge Futures is something I’m immensely grateful for. Throughout my career as an entrepreneur, I’ve been driven by something my grandfather told me: “The difference between people that did it and those that didn’t do it is that those who did it, did it, and those that didn’t, didn’t.” He had a funny way with words, but the underlying idea always stuck with me.

I believe deeply in our new mission to make information useful and I deeply believe in our team. We have realized the idea of a new kind of knowledge organization thanks to Travis being bold enough to start; his humility and leadership (especially in this moment); and the team, friends, and fellow travelers who have contributed to Knowledge Futures since 2015. Now we need to advance it. This is a position and moment for which I feel uniquely qualified.

Throughout my career, I have found that I thrive in moments of discomfort and change: from making an idea real to taking the collaborative actions necessary to lead a team through a major growth phase. The path I’ve taken to this particular opportunity has been unconventional. I don’t have a college degree because I felt creating companies was the best way to learn by doing, and today I have a track record of building information-based technology companies in service of a more connected, informed, and inspired public. I grew up with an idealism about what the internet would enable, specifically how it would bring people together and expose people to ideas that would eventually lead to a greater understanding of themselves, each other, and our world. I still believe in that today despite having a lot more exposure to the downsides of internet-scale information sharing than when I started.

That digital idealism is why I joined KF. When I first met with the KF team at MIT at the end of 2019 I did not expect to join them. My plan was to continue building for-profit technology companies. However, in the conversations we had, I saw the big vision, realized its connection to my career, and specifically asked to join because I saw the potential of building infrastructure solutions to societal-level information problems in the way that KF was going about it. Since then, I’ve learned about this industry and how it’s different but in many ways quite similar to building tech companies in the for-profit world. To be successful, regardless of the industry or governance structure, you have to build great products and be laser-focused on service—serving partners, teammates, and the broader ecosystem that your organization or company is a part of.

My broad range of experience and networks in various industries sets me up to serve KF as we build toward our vision of a new knowledge institution with an unwavering commitment to publicly accessible and trustworthy knowledge.

We are at an inflection point for all of us who are thinking about how to best communicate knowledge. I accept this position with a desire to lead with humility and with the confidence to positively influence society’s ability to make information useful. This next chapter of KF will be critical in solidifying the organization’s trusted position in the ecosystem. The path to doing this will be challenging, and while we are positioned for it, we are wide-eyed in knowing that we will need to do it collaboratively. Speaking on behalf of the KF team, we are excited to realize new knowledge futures with you all. We will do it.