Mark Thompson (media executive)

Sir Mark John Thompson is a British–American media executive who is Chairman of the Board of Directors of Ancestry, the largest for-profit genealogy company in the world, and Chief Executive Officer of the Cable News Network (CNN). He is the former president and chief executive officer of The New York Times Company. From 2004 to 2012, he was Director-General of the BBC, and before that was the Chief Executive of Channel 4. In 2009 Thompson was ranked as the 65th most powerful person in the world by Forbes magazine. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2017.