The Board of Directors of the Buddhist Digital Resource Center (BDRC) is pleased to announce the appointment of Gregory Forgues as the organization's Executive Director, as BDRC concludes its first twenty-five years and looks toward its next quarter century of preserving and making Buddhist literature accessible for generations to come.

Founded by the eminent scholar E. Gene Smith (1936-2010), BDRC emerged from a visionary commitment to preserve endangered Tibetan Buddhist texts and ensure broad access to the literary and intellectual traditions of Tibet and the Himalayan world. Over the past twenty-five years, BDRC has grown into an internationally respected digital archive and research resource serving scholars, practitioners, translators, librarians, and communities around the world, while increasingly expanding access across the broader landscape of Buddhist traditions, languages, and cultures.

Gregory Forgues brings to the role a rare combination of scholarly depth, organizational leadership, and technological fluency. A Buddhist Studies scholar with a PhD from the University of Vienna, Gregory has worked extensively across academic, translation, business, and nonprofit communities, including leadership and governance experience with 84000, Khyentse Foundation, Siddhartha's Intent, and Tsadra Foundation. His research spans the principal Buddhist canonical languages and a wide range of Tibetan Buddhist literary traditions, much of it undertaken at corpus scale. He has also been at the forefront of exploring how emerging technologies — including AI and large language models — may responsibly support the preservation, organization, discovery, and accessibility of Buddhist textual traditions.

The Board believes Gregory is uniquely positioned to help guide BDRC into its next era — building upon the depth, integrity, and collaborative spirit that have defined the organization since its founding, while thoughtfully engaging the opportunities and challenges of a rapidly changing technological and scholarly landscape.