Joumana El Zein Khoury

Joumana El Zein Khoury (Netherlands) is the Lebanese-born Executive Director of the World Press Photo Foundation, a role she has held since 2021. Born in Beirut and raised across different countries and cultures, she has spent her career working in international cultural exchange and supporting the power of people and communities to shape, preserve and share their own stories.

Her early work with the Arab Image Foundation became an important influence on her understanding of photography and representation. Through an archive documenting the Arab world from the perspective of Arab photographers, Joumana saw how the person behind the camera can profoundly shape identity, history and the way communities are understood. She later served as Director of the Prince Claus Fund, supporting artists and cultural practitioners around the world and strengthening a belief that culture is not a luxury, but an essential human need.

As World Press Photo marked its 70th anniversary, Joumana also encouraged the organization to examine its own visual history and the responsibilities that come with preserving and presenting images of conflict, identity and human experience. Alongside celebrating photography, she advocates for stronger ethics, practical support and more sustainable careers for visual storytellers. At a time of misinformation, artificial intelligence and rapidly changing media, her work centres on trust, context and the belief that photographs become more powerful when we understand the people, stories and perspectives behind them.