meeting last week. Earlier this year, she was named the executive vice president and chief operating officer of the company, following her role as chief revenue officer for two years. She will become the first woman, first person of colour as well as the first person from outside of the United States to lead the major news agency since its inception 175 years ago. According to the AP, the appointment of Veerasingham, who is a first-generation Briton of Sri Lankan descent, speaks to “the changing portrait” of the company, which generates 40 per cent of its revenue outside of the US.
Following the announcement of her appointment, Veerasingham noted that she is determined to fight for freedom of the press and access to information, while maintaining the New York-based news agency as a source of fact-based, nonpartisan journalism. “These are values that are core to the AP since its founding 175 years ago,” she said. “I think that they are actually more important today.”
Veerasingham, 51, joined AP in 2004 as a sales director for AP Television News based in London. Eventually, she led the company’s expansion efforts as she became responsible for marketing and content licensing in Europe, the Middle East, Asia, Australia and Africa. Steven R. Swartz, chairman of the AP’s board of directors called Veerasingham a proven leader with a clear vision for the future.
The AP was initially established with the primary objective of selling news to newspapers and broadcasters. However, over the years, the organisation broadened its licensing efforts to other areas, currently producing about 3,000 photos and 200 videos, in addition to roughly 2,000 news stories every day, reaching more than half the world’s population.
