Donald Katz

Donald Katz is founder and CEO of Audible, Inc., the leading provider of premium digital spoken audio information and entertainment.

Founded in 1995 and headquartered in Newark, NJ since 2007, Audible serves millions of listeners and offers over 400,000 downloadable audiobooks, audio editions of periodicals, and other programs.  The company commercialized the first portable digital audio player in 1997.  Audible is the supplier of audiobooks to Apple’s iTunes store worldwide and operates eight dedicated digital storefronts including audible.com, audible.co.uk, audible.de, audible.fr, audible.com.au, audible.jp, audible.it and audible.ca.  Audible was publicly traded on NASDAQ until acquired by Amazon.com in 2008 and is now an Amazon.com, Inc. subsidiary.

Named one of NJ.com’s “25 Most Influential People in New Jersey” in 2016, Katz was also recognized as one of America’s Top 25 Disruptive Leaders by Living Cities for his work on behalf of urban transformation in Newark. Katz is the founder of Newark Venture Partners, a social impact early-stage investment fund and ultra-bandwidth accelerator that seeks to connect Newark to the early-stage technology start-up innovation economy. He also served as both a member and chairman of Newark’s economic development corporation. Katz served as a member of the public library board in Montclair, New Jersey for nine years, and has served on the board of Uncommon Schools, a nonprofit organization that manages several of the most outstanding urban college preparatory charter schools in the Northeast, since the organization was founded in 1997.

Prior to founding Audible, Katz was a journalist and author whose work won a National Magazine Award, an Overseas Press Club Award, and the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize for Nonfiction.