Kat Downs Mulder named chief product officer and managing editor at The Washington Post

Memo to staff from Executive Editor Sally Buzbee and CIO Shailesh Prakash:

To our colleagues,

We are happy to announce that Kat Downs Mulder is taking on a new role that reflects our digital ambitions and further builds upon the close relationship between the newsroom and technology. Kat will take on this new, truly hybrid role between News and Engineering as chief product officer and managing editor, reporting to both of us. This move will help accelerate digital innovation across The Washington Post, which has never been more important as we work to modernize the way we tell stories, further grow subscriptions and evolve in the digital space.

Kat will continue to oversee journalists focused on storytelling in video, audio, photos, graphics and design, as well as news curation, audience development and emerging news products. In addition, she will now run the product teams and newsroom engineering, which drive the development of The Post’s website, apps, subscriptions, internal tools and more. This combination will help expand our audience and deepen connections with new and loyal readers by increasing the cohesion of our teams, further aligning our product and editorial roadmaps and accelerating the development of the next generation of news products.

Kat has long bridged the newsroom and engineering, with deep experience in both. Before being named managing editor in the newsroom, she was vice president of product and design overseeing The Post’s product strategy. She previously led The Post’s Graphics department.

The move is effective immediately. Please join us in congratulating Kat on this new role.

Sally and Shailesh