Media Transformation Challenge Class of ’25: From Fellows to Alumni & Ideas to Impact

Thirty-one media leaders reflect on the risks they took, the assumptions they unlearned, and the measurable change they led across newsrooms, audiences, and organizations worldwide.

ST. PETERSBURG, FL (January 13, 2026) — Media Transformation Challenge Class of 2025 officially transformed from Fellows to Alumni this week, presenting their final updates, nabbing their certificates, and marking the close of a yearlong performance-driven oriented leadership journey.

In a candid final session, the thirty-one Fellows – representing a mix of global media brands, public-service broadcasters, nonprofit newsrooms, and collaborative journalism organizations – reflected on the risks they took, the assumptions they had to unlearn, and the changes they were willing to lead. What emerged were not just polished case studies, but grounded accounts of experimentation, insights, and momentum gained.

“MTC’s most significant transformation is one’s self,” Mark Grant, Vice-President Global Safety, Risk and Resilience and Chief Security at The Associated Press, told the incoming class. “I moved from being an operator to a strategist. I no longer live on the dance floor; I’m firmly on that balcony empowering teams and driving change. I’ve developed a deeper sense of belonging in the journalism space. And I’m no longer seen as just a safety leader. I’m seen as a news leader who deserves a seat at the leadership table.”

Across organizations of vastly different sizes and missions, Fellows shared concrete outcomes from their year of work – advancing audience growth, revenue diversification, trust and safety, leadership alignment, and organizational resilience – while underscoring a common lesson for the incoming class: transformation is as much about how leaders show up as what they deliver.

“MTC showed me that, in trying to protect the mission, I was holding on too tightly,” India Currents CEO and Publisher, Vandana Kumar, said. “So I stopped asking, ‘How do I control the change?’ and I started asking, ‘How do I trust it without losing our values?’ And that question changed everything.”

Notable outcomes driven by 2025 Fellows include:

• An established ethnic media organization is evolving from a legacy, older-skewing audience to a cross-generational, social-first cultural resource, using AI-assisted audience analysis and youth co-creation to drive next-gen growth of 250,000 new readers, 16,000 engagements, and growth of 18–44 audience from <4,000 to ~60,000.
• A global public-service media organization is addressing industrial-scale disinformation and audience equity challenges by launching new language services and gender-focused growth initiatives, while aligning senior leadership practice to support large-scale audience expansion (including a goal of +25 million women reached).
• A local nonprofit newsroom is strengthening financial resilience by diversifying philanthropic revenue and activating community engagement as a monetizable asset, translating leadership development into organizational stability and executive advancement.

The Class of 2025 now joins MTC’s robust Alumni Network of nearly 435 fellow fellows across industries and continents.

“I’m so grateful for the leveraged power of MTC,” New York Amsterdam News President and Chief Financial Officer Siobhan Bennette said. “Not only the incredible tools (that I’ll use the rest of my life) but also the power of our coaches and colleagues that helped me set our whole revenue team at Amsterdam News on a more secure and transformative path to long term sustainability.”

“The support of the fellows and the coaches helped me dig deeper than I ever thought I could both personally and professionally,” The Chronicle of Philanthropy‘s Chief Content Officer, Margie Flemming Glennon, said in summary. “I leave reinvigorated by completing the challenge and hitting my goals, gaining confidence, learning new tools, and having so many savvy new friends in the industry. MTC is a life-changing program.”