Fellows Luncheon with Gerard Ryle

*This event is only open to our 2026-2027 Fellows 

The World Affairs Council Fellows Program offers a unique professional development opportunity to a small group of greater Seattle's business and community leaders. The Fellows convene monthly for breakfast discussions with carefully selected high-caliber international experts who offer unparalleled insight into current global issues, in addition to meeting throughout the year for additional Council events and dedicated networking opportunities.

About our Speaker

Gerard Ryle is ICIJ's executive director. He led the worldwide teams of journalists working on the Panama Papers, Paradise Papers and Pandora Papers investigations, the biggest in journalism history. Under his leadership, ICIJ has become one of the best-known journalism brands in the world. Reporters Without Borders has described Ryle’s work with ICIJ as "the future of investigative journalism worldwide" when naming him as one of "100 information heroes" of worldwide significance.

Before joining as ICIJ’s first non-American director in September 2011, Ryle spent more than 20 years working as an investigative reporter and editor in Australia. His work as a journalist began in his native Ireland. He was later a Knight-Wallace Journalism Fellow at the University of Michigan, and in 2013 he accepted an honorary doctorate from the University of Liege, on behalf of ICIJ.

Ryle is a book author and TED speaker and has won or shared in more than 50 journalism awards from seven different countries, including the 2017 Pulitzer Prize, three George Polk Awards, and honors from the Society of Professional Journalists, Overseas Press Club of America, the New York Press Club, the Barlett and Steele Awards, Investigative Reporters and Editors, and Harvard University.

He and his ICIJ colleagues also shared an Emmy Award with the U.S. television program 60 Minutes.