Mountain State Spotlight announced today that Sara Crickenberger will retire as the organization’s Executive Director and that Ken Ward Jr. will assume a larger role to supervise both editorial and business functions.
Crickenberger, who led MSS’s business team since November 2023, will retire effective Dec. 31. She shared leadership responsibilities with Ward, who supervised the organization’s editorial team.
During a meeting last week, Board of Directors members restructured MSS to have one leader over all functions and appointed Ward, who helped found the organization in 2020, as Founding Editor-in-Chief and President to lead editorial and business functions.
Ward’s new role is effective immediately. Crickenberger will continue to serve as a Senior Adviser through the end of 2025.
“Without Sara Crickenberger’s steady hand at our helm, great judgment and lifetime of experience doing work which matters, Mountain State Spotlight would not have grown and developed as well as we have over the last couple of years,” said Ben Bailey, chair of the MSS Board. “I am deeply grateful for her time here, and also grateful for her commitment to work with us through our ongoing strategic planning process and transition into 2026”.
Crickenberger said, “I’ve been a fan and supporter of Mountain State Spotlight since I first heard about Ken’s vision of creating a nonprofit digital newsroom in 2020. That won’t change, even though my official role with the organization will evolve over the next few months and into 2026 as I move into my next chapter.”
Under Crickenberger’s leadership, MSS greatly increased major donor support for Mountain State Spotlight, as well as local foundation funding, and built a stronger business operation.
“Sara Crickenberger’s leadership has been instrumental in strengthening the foundation of Mountain State Spotlight,” said Amar Rajwani, board member at Mountain State Spotlight and chief financial officer at the American Journalism Project, which has funded and supported MSS since its launch.
“With Ken Ward Jr. stepping into this expanded role, the organization is poised to deepen its impact and continue delivering the kind of accountability journalism that drives change,” Rajwani said. “AJP has been honored to support MSS from the beginning and we look forward to what’s ahead.”
A native of Greenbrier and Pocahontas counties, Crickenberger spent decades running a variety of West Virginia nonprofit organizations, including Lewisburg’s Carnegie Hall and the American Lung Association of West Virginia. Before that, she began her professional career working for newspapers in West Virginia, including the Charleston Daily Mail, The Evening/Weekend Journal in Martinsburg, and The Register-Herald in Beckley.
Ward said, “Sara’s love for West Virginia and for journalism combined with her experience and skill at running nonprofits to help take Mountain State Spotlight a long way in a couple of short years.”
Ward helped found Mountain State Spotlight in 2020 and has done reporting, editing and fundraising work for the organization.
He spent six years working on major projects with the ProPublica Local Reporting Network. Before that, he spent nearly three decades reporting for The Charleston Gazette on the impacts of coal mining, chemical manufacturing and natural gas drilling on his home state of West Virginia. In 2018, he received a MacArthur Fellowship – the so-called “Genius Grant” — for “revealing the human and environmental toll of natural resource extraction in West Virginia and spurring greater accountability among public and private stakeholders.” He grew up in Mineral County and graduated from West Virginia University.
While his new role includes supervising the MSS business team, it also will provide renewed time for Ward to resume more of his own reporting and writing.
Ward said, “I continue to feel privileged to get to do this work for the place and people I love. I am excited for this next chapter for this important organization, and grateful to so many West Virginians who are making reader-supported journalism a reality here.”