Nasr ul Hadi

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 community development → applied research → cohort training → embedded consulting, to instigate innovation and experiments across news ecosystems. Since 2019, these programs have helped more than 1,000 media professionals from 250+ organisations and 30+ countries build skills, projects and networks — in partnership with big tech, global foundations, UN agencies, top J-schools, among others.

Hadi has also 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 digital-only newsrooms. Some of his work is the basis for publications by mediatech, think tanks, universities, even policymakers.

He shares these learnings on new media products and entrepreneurship often, at leading news industry conferences and postgraduate/mid-career programs across the Americas, Europe, Africa, the Middle East and the Indo-Pacific.