Patrick Chappatte
Free expression has become a corporate risk question, not only a civic one. Leaders are now asked to take positions on contested public issues, manage employees who do the same, and operate in markets where satire and dissent are increasingly punished. Holding a clear view on what is sayable, by whom, and at what cost has become part of the job.
Patrick Chappatte is an editorial cartoonist and graphic journalist who helps audiences see contested public issues through the discipline of visual satire, drawing on three decades of work for The New York Times, Le Temps, NZZ am Sonntag and The Boston Globe.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Patrick Chappatte
- He has spent thirty years drawing on deadline for serious newspapers, including a two-decade run for The New York Times International Edition. That gives audiences a reading of global affairs that almost no other speaker can offer: not commentary about journalism, but the work itself, performed live.
- He is the only non-American to win the Overseas Press Club of America’s Thomas Nast Award, and he has won it three times. That is the senior credential in his field and it is verifiable from a named external body.
- He chairs the Freedom Cartoonists Foundation, founded with Kofi Annan and Jean Plantu. That places him at the centre of the international press freedom conversation in a way few keynote speakers can match.
- His live-drawing format gives a room something it rarely has: an unrepeatable visual record of the conversation, produced in real time. It works as keynote, as conference closer, and as graphic facilitation of a leadership meeting.
- He brings firsthand graphic reportage from Gaza, Nairobi, Central America, death row in the United States, and Silicon Valley. The material is specific, not generic, and gives a corporate audience an honest view of issues it normally only reads about.
Biography highlights
- In-house editorial cartoonist for The New York Times International Edition, 2001 to 2019.
- Three-time winner of the Overseas Press Club of America Thomas Nast Award (2011, 2015, 2018); the only non-American to have done so.
- Current publications include The Boston Globe, Le Canard enchaine, La Tribune Dimanche, Le Temps and NZZ am Sonntag.
- Honorary Doctorate from EPFL (the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne), awarded 2022.
- Named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum in 2006.
- Chairs the Geneva-based Freedom Cartoonists Foundation, which awards the Kofi Annan Courage in Cartooning Award.
- Two TED talks: “The power of cartoons” (2010) and “A free world needs satire” (2019).
Biography
The New York Times stopped running political cartoons in its international edition in 2019. Patrick Chappatte had drawn there twice a week since 2001. He used the moment to argue, in a TED talk that has since been viewed millions of times, that a free press needs satire, and that the retreat from cartooning is one of the quieter signals of where public discourse is heading.
That argument is grounded in three decades of work on serious deadlines. Chappatte’s drawings appear in The Boston Globe, Le Canard enchaine, La Tribune Dimanche, Le Temps, and NZZ am Sonntag. He has won the Overseas Press Club of America’s Thomas Nast Award three times, in 2011, 2015 and 2018, the only non-American to have done so. EPFL, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, awarded him an honorary doctorate in 2022.
He is also a pioneer of graphic journalism. Since 1995 he has produced long-form comics reportage from Gaza, the Nairobi slums, Central American gang territory, death row in the United States, and Silicon Valley. His 2009 work on cluster munitions in southern Lebanon became an animated documentary that aired on Swiss and French television. The Inside Death Row series, produced with the journalist Anne-Frederique Widmann for the Times in 2016, remains one of the most cited examples of the form.
Chappatte chairs the Freedom Cartoonists Foundation in Geneva, founded with Kofi Annan and the French cartoonist Jean Plantu. The foundation awards the Kofi Annan Courage in Cartooning Award. For senior audiences, he draws live, in real time, against the conversation in the room, and uses that work as the basis for an argument about why visual thinking, satire, and free expression matter to organisations that operate in contested public space.
Key speaking topics
- Press freedom and the corporate stake in free expression
- Visual thinking and graphic journalism
- Satire as a method for engaging contested issues
- Live-drawing keynotes and conference closers
- Global affairs through the lens of a working editorial cartoonist
- Democracy, polarisation and the limits of public discourse
Ideal for
- Annual conferences and leadership offsites looking for a closing keynote that produces a visible record of the day
- Editorial, communications and brand leadership teams working through reputational risk on contested public issues
- Boards and senior groups examining geopolitics, democratic backsliding, and the limits of corporate speech
- Media, publishing and creative organisations engaging with the future of journalism
Audience outcomes
- A clearer view of why satire and visual journalism still matter inside serious organisations, drawn from a working practitioner
- A live visual record of the session that can be used afterwards as a communication asset
- A sharper feel for how global affairs read from outside an American or Anglo-Saxon frame
- A grounded argument for why free expression is now a corporate risk question, not only a civic one
Talks
The case for political cartooning as a stress test for democratic societies, drawn from Chappatte’s response to The New York Times’ 2019 decision to stop running editorial cartoons.
Key takeaways:
- Why the retreat from satire is a signal about the wider health of public discourse
- How cartoonists work under threat in democracies and authoritarian states
- What organisations can learn from the visual press freedom conversation
A working cartoonist’s view of how visual journalism can de-escalate conflict, drawn from collaborative projects in Lebanon, Kenya, Ivory Coast and Guatemala.
Key takeaways:
- How cartoons travel across language and political division
- What graphic journalism delivers that written reportage cannot
- The Crossed Pens method for collaborative cartooning in conflict zones