2025 Nieman-Berkman Fellow for Journalism Innovation
Harvard University
Ryan Y. Kellett is a 2025 Nieman Berkman Klein fellow at Harvard University. He works the intersection of journalism and the creator economy as a teacher, consultant and communicator.
He most recently was VP of Audience at Axios Media overseeing growth. In his three years at Axios, he oversaw a threefold increase in audiences to axios.com. He also launched a creator/influencer social team as part of Axios Local’s rollout to 30 cities across the country.
Prior to Axios, Ryan was The Washington Post’s Senior Director of Audience. He guided The Post through the mobile/social era, quadrupling online readership globally and massively expanding subscriptions as a core revenue stream. In his 11-year tenure, he led a significant expansion of The Post’s audience functions to include social, SEO, live journalism, newsletters, subscriber engagement, young audiences, and editorial analytics. He was an author of the proposal on comments/communities that would become The Coral Project. Ryan and his teams have won multiple Edward R. Murrow, WAN-IFRA, Webby, and Online Journalism awards.
Ryan is a proud graduate of the Asian American Journalists Association’s Executive Leadership Program and an active board member of the Online News Association.
Follow his research on Linkedin.
Finding the "We" – Why and How to Integrate News Creator Strategies into Your Newsroom
Monday, March 30, 2026
9:00 AM - 10:00 AM CT