Next American City is pleased to announce John Cary as its first President & CEO, succeeding Editor in Chief & Publisher Diana Lind.

In this new capacity, John will lead the organization’s dedicated staff, interface with existing and potential funders and partners, as well as expand the reach and impact of Next American City’s myriad initiatives.

Since Diana Lind joined Next American City in March 2008, the organization has dramatically increased its influence among urban advocates. Diana oversaw the creation of the URBANEXUS event series, the Next American Vanguard urban leaders group, and the Open Cities annual conference on new media’s role in shaping urban policy. In the past two years, the magazine’s subscriber base has doubled and its website traffic has tripled.

“I’m very proud of the momentum behind Next American City today and I couldn’t be more thrilled that John has joined our team to carry the organization forward with our talented staff and contributors,” said Diana Lind.

Before joining Next American City, John served as executive director of San Francisco nonprofit Public Architecture, building it into the leading national advocate for public-interest design and recruiting over 750 firms to pledge tens of millions of dollars in pro bono design services annually.

John is also the editor of The Power of Pro Bono: 40 Stories about Design for the Public Good by Architects and Their Clients, forthcoming this fall from Metropolis Books / Distributed Art Publishers. Among other honors, John is a senior fellow of the Design Futures Council, a fellow of the American Academy in Rome, and recently held the Public Affairs Practitioner Residency at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center.

Diana will continue to serve as the magazine’s Editor at Large and the host of Metro Matters, a podcast produced in collaboration with the Brookings Institution. She recently began work as program director for the newly formed Geneva-based New Cities Foundation. She is also at work on writing a comparative urban policy book and an illustrated primer on global urban innovations.

In addition to these transitions, Julia Ramey Serazio and Tivoni Devor are advancing their roles within the organization as Executive Editor and Director of Partnerships, respectively.