The International Press Institute (IPI) this week added new members to its Executive Board and elected Russian journalist Galina Sidorova as the board’s chair.

IPI members on June 25 voted at their annual General Assembly to elect Umud Mirzayev of Azerbaijan to IPI’s Executive Board, to give a second four-year term to five other incumbent board members and to replace two long-serving members who are retiring.

The Executive Board, meanwhile, voted in Sidorova – chair of the Foundation for Investigative Journalism, Foundation 19/29 and former editor-in-chief of Sovershenno Secretno in Russia – as IPI’s new chair. Sidorova has been a member of IPI for five years, and has served for the last two years as one of three vice-chairs of IPI’s Executive Board.

Sidorova, who is only the second woman to head IPI’s Executive Board in the group’s 62-year history, said: “It is a great responsibility to be next on the list of my honoured predecessors who did so much to safeguard press freedom all over our diverse world… And it is a great challenge to bring a new momentum to this never-ending fight.”

Sidorova’s ascension to leadership of the Executive Board marked the first time that women held both top leadership posts at IPI. The group’s current executive director, Alison Bethel McKenzie, was named to that post in 2011.

IPI’s Executive Board elected IPI Bangladesh National Committee Chair Monjurul Ahsan Bulbul, editor-in-chief & CEO of Boishakhi TV in Bangladesh, to fill Sidorova’s position as one of three vice-chairs of IPI’s Executive Board. His fellow vice-chairs include Pavol Mudry, a media consultant and the chair of the IPI Slovak National Committee, and Simon Li, a media consultant in the United States.

IPI members during the General Assembly re-elected five serving members of the Executive Board to second, four-year terms: Sidorova; Mudry; Alexandra Föderl-Schmid, editor-in-chief of Der Standard newspaper in Austria; Ferai Tinc, former columnist at Hurriyet in Istanbul and immediate-past chair of IPI’s Turkish National Committee; and Radomir Licina, member of the Board and senior editor of the newspaper Danas, in Serbia.

The members also added Mirzayev to the board and agreed to replace former IPI North American Committee Chair Patricia Smith with that national committee’s new head, Ryan Blethen of The Seattle Times, and to replace former Executive Board member Kiyofuku Chuma, of Japan, with Toshihiko Uji of the Chunichi Shimbun.

Mirzayev, national committee chair of the IPI Azerbaijan National Committee and chair of the International Eurasia Press Fund (IEPF), said he was excited to be elected to the board and that he was committed to growing IPI membership in the region over the next two years with the addition of four new national committees.

IPI held its annual World Congress and 62nd General Assembly in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago from June 23 to 26 under the theme: “Media in a Challenging World: A 360-degree Perspective.” More than 300 participants from all over the world attended the event.