Juanita León

Juanita León is the director of La Silla Vacía, an independent Colombian media organization. She studied law at the Universidad de los Andes and completed a master’s degree in journalism at Columbia University in New York.

After working at The Wall Street Journal Americas in New York, she returned to Colombia, where she worked as editor of El Tiempo’s Peace Unit, covering the peace process with the FARC. She served as the news editor of Semana magazine, and in 2006, she led the creation of the daily edition of Semana.com. After a year at Harvard University as a Nieman Fellow, she led the launch of Flypmedia.com magazine in New York. With seed capital from the Open Society Foundation and contributions from her family, she returned to Colombia once more to launch La Silla Vacía.

She is the author of books including “No somos machos pero somos muchos, 5 crónicas de resistencia civil,” “País de Plomo, crónicas de guerra” and more recently, “10,000 horas en La Silla Vacía, periodismo y poder en un nuevo mundo,” where she tells the story of La Silla. With the team of La Silla Vacía, she has edited and written pieces including “Los Súperpoderosos del 2014” and “El dulce poder.” She is a member of the Superior Council of the Universidad de Los Andes.