Richard Tofel

Dick Tofel is the principal of Gallatin Advisory LLC and author of the Second Rough Draft newsletter on Substack. He was the founding general manager (and first employee) of ProPublica from 2007-12, and its president from 2013-21. As president, he had responsibility for all of ProPublica’s non-journalism operations, including communications, legal, development, finance and budgeting, and human resources.

During the period of Tofel’s business leadership, ProPublica grew from an initial staff of just over 20 to more than 160, and raised more than $225 million from other than its founding funders.

Tofel is an instructor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, where he teaches a course on “Engaging with the Press.” He was formerly the assistant publisher of The Wall Street Journal.