Tor Project hires Shari Steele, who led the EFF for 15 years, as its new executive director
Tor Hires a New Leader to Help It Combat the War on Privacy — The Tor Project is entering a crucial phase in its nearly 10-year existence. In the wake of the Edward Snowden leaks …
Context & Ripple Effects
Steele arrives weeks after Tor's first-ever crowdfunding campaign, an explicit attempt to loosen dependence on US government funding — so the hire reads as part of a deliberate professionalization push rather than a routine staffing change. Her 15 years running the EFF give Tor a leader with a track record in exactly the two things the post-Snowden moment demands: public advocacy for privacy tools and nonprofit fundraising at scale.
First-order effects
- Tor gains an experienced nonprofit executive at a moment when its usage and scrutiny both spiked post-Snowden; Steele inherits the funding-diversification mandate the November campaign started and the job of changing how the public perceives the network.
Second-order effects
- Within months the governance overhaul deepens: Tor replaces its entire board with figures like Bruce Schneier and Matt Blaze following Jacob Appelbaum's resignation, signaling that the Steele hire was the first move in an institution-wide rebuild.
Third-order effects
- The pattern holds over the long run — by 2024 Tor is confident enough institutionally to absorb Tails, which said it had outgrown its own structure, suggesting the professionalization begun with Steele turned a grant-funded research project into an umbrella organization for anonymity tooling.
The trend: Privacy infrastructure projects are evolving from loose, government-grant-dependent collectives into professionally governed nonprofits capable of consolidating adjacent tools.