Comments on news websites are mostly seen as a disaster. That’s why The Coral Project was created – a multi-million dollar collaboration between The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Mozilla, funded by the Knight Foundation, to create a better commenting experience on the internet.

I was hired to lead the project from its launch. I established its vision, developed the strategy, built the engineering and design team, and oversaw the creation of a successful, sustainable open source product that is used around the world.

I chose to focus our work initially on academic and user research, hiring a diverse team that had personal experience of receiving online abuse.

Following its successful launch, I then spearheaded its search for a new home, successfully negotiating its acquisition by Vox Media in 2019, where I developed and grew a profitable SaaS business while working closely with Vox Media titles.

Now known as Coral, the platform powers communities on more than 500 websites in 23 languages. As far as we know, it's in active use in 28 countries, including on the websites of The Washington Post, The Financial Times, Slate, Globo, Wired, The Hindu, and The Globe and Mail. Coral was featured as a United Nations Digital Public Good in 2023.