John Jaeger is the CEO & Co-Founder at Hala Systems.Before founding Hala, He worked for the US Department of State in Turkey on Syria. His responsibilities were manifold, but he had the opportunity to create and implement a program partially of his own design. It was called the Support to Independent Media program and it was specifically focused on ceding editorial control over content to their Syrian partners while He provided structured mentorship and assistance. In the course of working with over a dozen partner entities, He formed a reporting pool from among them all in order to cover the Geneva II peace conferences in Switzerland. Everyone truly collaborated for the first time ever and it was a beautiful thing. More than that, though, it was an historic opportunity for normal citizens to question authority figures on the other side of a civil war in front of the entire world. The NYTimes Middle East bureau chief remarked to me, "I've never seen anything like this. It's remarkable." He didn't build these media organizations, but he helped.
