Cork-born Samantha Barry serves as CNN’s head of Social Media and senior director of Social News, managing all of the company’s global social media teams. Her teams span publishing, news-gathering, digital, and TV and are responsible for the largest social accounts of any news brand in the world. The path from Cork to New York has been a global one for Barry, who, after stints in RTÉ and Newstalk, traveled the world working for ABC Australia and the U.S. State Department training young journalists. Most recently, she worked at BBC World News in London. Barry is also currently a Sulzberger Fellow at Colombia University and a guest-lecturer at Yale.

Barry earned a degree in English and psychology from University College Cork and a master’s in journalism from Dublin City University. Her Cork roots are strong – her father’s family is from Bantry and her mother is from Bere Island. She cites her heritage as what spurred her toward her many achievements, saying, “I am extremely proud of coming from a long line of Irish people who leave, seek opportunities abroad, and are fearless travelers.”