Position/Organization: director, Tow Center for Digital Journalism at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism; founder, The Guardian Unlimited

Emily Bell, the inaugural director of Columbia J-School's Tow Center for Digital Journalism, has a distinguished career in journalism. She worked at the Guardian since 2000, first as founder and editor of the watchdog/commentary site mediaguardian.co.uk, then as editor-in-chief of the paper's entire online site, Guardian Unlimited. Under Bell the site received numerous awards, including the Webby Award Winner for a newspaper website in 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2009, and British Press Awards for Website of the Year in 2006, 2008, 2009, and built an international online readership of some 37 million. The site's science section is one of its strongest. As director of the Tow Center and a new journalism-computer science double-degree program at Columbia, she hopes to explore and develop new ways to exploit new media structures and skillsets to create high-quality journalism.