Glenn Kates has more than 15 years of experience as a journalist and editor, leading cross-platform editorial teams in multiple languages across Eastern Europe, The Baltics and Central Asia.

Glenn began his career at the Voice of America in Washington, DC before joining The New York Times Moscow bureau, in 2011, where he helped cover large-scale protests following Russia’s legislative elections.

Later, after moving to Prague, Glenn served as Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s first digital editor, helping to transition the organization to a modern multimedia enterprise. In 2015, following Russia’s annexation of Crimea, as Managing Editor, Glenn helped create and lead a new Russian language digital news outlet called Current Time. It quickly became one of a small number of independent Russian-language resources to consistently reach millions of people on a daily basis.

In 2019, Glenn moved to Kyiv, where he pursued a long-held ambition of popularizing narrative audio in the Eastern European market. During this time, he produced an award-winning audio miniseries on the rise and fall of independent Russian TV, a documentary for Audible on Belarus’ “Telegram Revolution” and a feature for U.S. public radio on life in Kyiv on the brink of war. He also helped Ukrainska Pravda develop its podcast unit.
Shortly after Russia’s full scale invasion, Glenn joined Zinc Network as its Portfolio Director for Media Development. There, Glenn led multi-million dollar projects aimed at building sustainable media and resilience to malign influence in Ukraine, the Baltics, Central Europe, Central Asia and the Caucasus.

Glenn’s reporting has been published in The New York Times, The Guardian, The Atlantic and other media. He has a BA from Binghamton University and a Masters from Georgetown.