The American Press Institute is excited to announce that Marita Pérez Díaz has joined API’s Product Strategy team as a Web Applications Engineer. In her role, she will support the technical development of API’s news products, including audience data tools Metrics for News and Source Matters. Pérez Díaz will help ensure the tools operate reliably and meet our users’ needs. As the product portfolio expands in the future, she will help link our product roadmap to our strategic goals as we support news organizations trying to understand, engage and serve their audiences better. She will also contribute to new solutions and act as our newsroom partners’ technical point of contact.
“Marita brings a wealth of experience as a multilingual community reporter, alongside her sharp, self-motivated technical acumen, that will hugely benefit the local newsrooms we serve now and in the future,” said Elite Truong, Vice President of Product Strategy at API. “We’re incredibly excited to add her to the team and continue developing news leaders’ ability to use data to pivot their editorial strategy through our products and Tech Talks programming.”
Pérez Díaz is a Cuban-American web developer and a winner of multiple hackathons with a background in journalism. In the past few years, she has covered multimedia stories for OnCuba News, including topics like Cubans around the world, politics in Miami, Cuba-U.S. relations and more. She also has experience in social media strategy, working with clients in journalism, art and healthcare. Before joining API, Pérez Díaz embarked on a career transition and studied web development.
“In times where technology advances so fast, journalism needs support and better tools to keep up with its audiences. I experienced it for a decade as a multimedia journalist, and now I am delighted to contribute from a technical point of view to the search for solutions that help newsrooms,” Pérez Díaz said. “I am very honored to work in a prestigious institution like API, where the use of technology and data is focused on supporting the media to better understand their digital performance and how to remain accountable when it comes to the diversity and quality of their sources.”
Pérez Díaz is based in South Florida. When she is not coding or learning new tools, you can find her painting friends’ dogs with watercolor and acrylic. To contact her, please email marita.perezdiaz@pressinstitute.org.
About the American Press Institute
The American Press Institute advances an innovative and sustainable news industry by helping publishers understand and engage audiences, grow revenue, improve public-service journalism, and succeed at organizational change. We believe that for democracies to thrive, people need accurate news and information about their communities, the problems of civil society and the debates over how to solve them. That requires an economically sustainable free press that reflects the diversity of American society and understands the needs of its communities. API is a national 501(c)3 nonprofit educational organization affiliated with the News Media Alliance.
