Sophie Schmidt (publisher)

Sophie Schmidt (born 1986 or 1987) is an American media executive and publisher. She is the founder and publisher of Rest of World, a nonprofit journalism organization focused on global technology news. She is also a director at the Schmidt Family Foundation.

Sophie Schmidt is the daughter of former Google CEO and executive chairman Eric Schmidt and his wife, Wendy Schmidt.

She attended Princeton University, graduating in 2009 with a bachelor's degree in Islamic studies. She wrote her undergraduate thesis on the impact of Internet technology in the Muslim world. Schmidt holds a Master of Business Administration degree from Stanford University and a Master of Public Administration degree from Harvard University.

In 2013, Schmidt interned at SCL Group, the parent company of Cambridge Analytica. She subsequently worked in Dubai at the Afghan media company Moby Group, and held positions at Google-funded incubator Umbono and Xiaomi in Beijing.

Schmidt later worked as a public policy and communications manager at Uber for three years. Schmidt also serves as a director of the Schmidt Family Foundation.

In January 2013, Schmidt accompanied her father on a visit to North Korea as part of a delegation led by former New Mexico Governor and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Bill Richardson. Sophie documented her impressions in a widely cited blog post, describing highly controlled and staged interactions, including a visit to Kim Il Sung University's e-library, which she characterized as feeling artificial, comparing the unresponsive students to figurines. Her candid, detailed account of her time in the country garnered widespread media attention.

In May 2020, Schmidt officially launched Rest of World, a nonprofit media publication covering technology stories outside western countries*.* In September 2020, Schmidt told The Wall Street Journal that she had already invested $6 million out of a family trust into the nonprofit and planned to spend "as much as $60 million over the next decade to sustain and expand the site and shine a light on technology's impact beyond developed Western countries."

In April 2024, Schmidt was named a 2024 Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum.

Sophie is Eric and Wendy Schmidt's only surviving child. Her sister, Alison, died in 2017 after a long illness.

She is based in New York.