Eason Jordan joined The Rockefeller Foundation in 2024 as the Senior Vice President of the Connected Leaders program where he will focus on growing, engaging, and energizing the Foundation’s network of convenings and fellows to advance partnerships and alliances that amplify action in support of its mission to promote the well-being of humanity.
An award-winning entrepreneur and executive, Jordan helped launch and lead CNN, NowThis and the Malala Fund. In the course of his career, he has made hundreds of working trips to more than 70 nations and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. At CNN, he rose through the ranks to become the network’s chief news executive and president of newsgathering and international networks, overseeing CNN’s news coverage and international outlets, expansion and relations. Jordan later served as the founding general manager of NowThis, a groundbreaking millennial-focused mobile, social video news service. As the first director at the girls’ education-focused Malala Fund, he worked as the closest adviser to Malala Yousafzai, the youngest-ever Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and UN Messenger of Peace. More recently, Jordan was founder and CEO of Oryx Strategies, a New York-based strategic planning, communications and media consulting company. His honors include Emmy Awards, Peabody Awards, Edward R. Murrow Awards, Headliner Awards, ACE Awards, the Robert Kennedy Journalism Award, the Vanguard Award and the Livingston Award. Jordan serves on the advisory board of Women for Women International, the advisory council of Stanford’s Human Perception Lab, and the board of trustees of the Fugees Family.