Tor Project director will leave at the end of this year

Tor Project director Shari Steele is set to leave the nonprofit at the end of this year. The organization, which is responsible for the management and maintenance of the Tor network, is looking for a successor.

Steele joined the Tor Project in December 2015 after the nonprofit announced it was seeking a new director in the summer of that year. Steel previously spent 15 years as a director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Cyberscoop was the first to write about her impending departure.

In the message announcing her departure, she confessed that she thought she would retire from the EFF, but that Tor was close to her heart and thought she could help the organization. The Verge points out that Steele guided the organization through the crisis that began in May 2016 when noted Tor developer and civil rights activist Jacob Appelbaum was accused of sexual harassment. This led, among other things, to the departure of the board of directors.

The nonprofit employs 35 developers and support staff. Together with volunteers worldwide, they maintain the Tor network that enables anonymous use of the internet through onion routing, which is used by dissidents in authoritarian regimes, among others. The Tor Project organization has been around since 2006.