Nasr ul Hadi is a Knight Fellow with the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ). He is also founder of PROTO, a media development studio that uses a funnel of community development, applied research, cohort-based training and embedded consulting to instigate innovation and experiments across news ecosystems. Since 2019, these programs have helped over a 1,000 media professionals from more than 250 organisations and 30 countries build skills, projects and networks — in partnership with big tech, global foundations, UN agencies, Ivy League J-schools, among others.

Hadi has led C-level collaborations with over a dozen of India’s best known legacy and startup news brands, on everything from redesigning workflows and setting up (award-winning) verticals, to pioneering modular/structured content projects and trying out new technologies, even helping hire for bridge roles and top management. He defined parts of the vision for India’s first philanthropic fund for journalism, first accelerator for media startups and first SaaS CMS for newsrooms. Some of his work is the basis for publications by media tech, think tanks, universities and policymakers.

Hadi shares these learnings on product and systems thinking in new media often, at leading news industry conferences and postgraduate or mid-career programs, across the Americas, Europe, Africa, the Middle East and the Indo-Pacific.