Aaron Rasmussen is an entrepreneur, inventor, and game designer. He’s best known as a founder of educational platforms MasterClass and Outlier.org, the latter known for creating impactful for-credit online college courses to promote affordable, equitable education. At MasterClass, Rasmussen was both Creative Director and CTO, creating courses taught by notable experts and directing many himself.

He previously founded and sold an industrial robotics company and a beverage company. The video game he co-wrote, BlindSide, has won multiple awards and is being adapted into a film. He speaks and writes on education, innovation, art, and the intersection of all with artificial intelligence.

Abaas Mpindi is the CEO of the Media Challenge Initiative (MCI), a Ugandan based organisation building the next generation of journalists in Uganda. Mpindi believes that good journalism can make the world a better place through the stories journalists tell and how they tell them. Under MCI, Mpindi oversees the MCI Media Hub, MCI Radio and Solutions Now Africa, platforms that are amplifying media innovations and using solutions journalism to challenge negative narratives about Africa. Mpindi's story has been published in the Huffington post, CNN African Voices and in 2018 his work was put on spotlight by President Barack Obama in his #Mandela 100 lecture in South Africa. Mpindi is a 2024 Elevate Prize Winner,  2023 Africa Visionary Fellow, 2018 Obama Leader, 2018 Tony Elumelu Entrepreneur and a Young Emerging Leaders Program Fellow.

Abduweli Ayup is a writer, activist and linguist specializing in Uyghur language education. He spent nine years lecturing in Northwest Minzu University and Xinjiang Financial and Economics University. Abduweli opened language schools and kindergartens in the city of Ürumchi and Kashgar in 2011. Following his arrest in August 2013, accused of promoting separatist activity, Abduweli spent 15 months in detention, before fleeing from China to Turkey with his family. In 2016, Abduweli founded Uyghur Hjelp, a non profit Uyghur human rights advocacy, documentation and humanitarian aid organization. Since 2019, Abduweli has lived in Bergen as a writer-in-residence through the ICORN program. He has published six books in Uyghurs. His first English book will be published in September 2024 by Silkie Publishing House.

Adam Faze is the founder of Gymnasium and the creative producer behind some of the most popular short-form series on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube, including Girl Room (Owen Thiele), Boy Room (Rachel Coster), and Keep The Meter Running (Kareem Rahma). His work has been viewed over 1 billion times and has been featured in outlets such as The New York Times, GQ, and The Guardian.

Adam was also a producer of iShowSpeed’s “Speed Does America,” a 35-day 24/7 live stream tour of the United States. Before moving into digital series, Adam spent nearly a decade in Hollywood working for film and TV producers like Annapurna Pictures (Zero Dark Thirty, American Hustle). The Hollywood Reporter recently named him one of the “50 Most Influential Influencers.”

Adam is the founder of Neuhaus Ideas, an ideas production company. Before that, Adam spent 7+ years as head of development for 30for30, ESPN Films and ESPN+ developing and producing 100+ storytelling projects across feature length documentaries, docuseries, scripted adaptations, digital series, and 30for30 Podcasts.  Adam is longtime supporter of the Ghetto Film School, previously serving on the Board of Directors and currently serving on the Advisory Board. Adam also serves on the Board of Directors for the Bushwick Film Institute and proudly serves as a mentor for Unlock Her Potential.

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Adam Pincus is an award-winning entertainment executive and producer whose career has spanned television, film and digital media.

He is currently founder and CEO of Best Case Studios, a production company that produced documentaries and narrative podcasts, including Fallen Angels: A Story of California Corruption based on reporting by three-time Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Paul Pringle.

Previosuly, he was Executive Vice President and head of content for First Look Media, best known for the Academy Award winning film Spotlight. He won an Emmy award there as executive producer of the documentary16 Shots, directed by Richard Rowley.

Pincus began his career as a working musician in New York City, before taking a role in digital media at Viacom Interactive Services, where he produced the first website for the Sundance Film Festival. He then moved to Sundance Channel, where he served in various roles and was executive producer of the long-running series Iconoclasts.

Following Sundance Channel, he founded the production company Hour One and executive produced the Peabody Award winning documentary series Nimrod Nation, directed by Brett Morgen. He then moved to WPP where he ran the content division for MediaCom, and then ran the North American content business for GroupM Entertainment.

He is a long-time Adjunct at New York University Stern School of Business where he teaches Business of Film, and previously taught at NYU’s Tisch School of The Arts. He has written about film and digital media for various publications, and was a Contributing Editor to FILMMAKER Magazine.

Adelin Petrișor is one of Romania’s most renowned war correspondents, with nearly three decades of experience in the field. He has reported from numerous conflict zones, including Serbia, Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Agata Kurzela is the founder and creative director of Agata Kurzela Studio, an architecture and design practice working across architecture, interior design, and product design. A master planner and architect with more than two decades of international experience, she began her career with a scholarship at the atelier of Christian de Portzamparc in Paris and later worked with leading international practices, including Zaha Hadid Architects in London.

Agata’s  work includes projects such as the Zayed National Museum, the Formula 1 Leadership Lounge for the UAE, and a Dezeen Award-winning adaptive reuse of a listed building in Abu Dhabi. Her independent  studio has been consistently recognized in Architectural Digest 100 Middle East.

Ahsan Akbar is a writer, entrepreneur, and socio-cultural organiser. He is a founder-director of the Dhaka Literary Festival. His critically acclaimed debut poetry collection, The Devil's Thumbprint, is taught at SOAS University of London. He guest-edited special issues for Granta, Wasafiri and Tank. He has written extensively for various newspapers, including The Guardian, Financial Times, Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Review of Books, Scroll, Telegraph India, and The Spectator. He is the founder of Symmetry Productions, a creative agency for artists in London. Akbar is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

Aïda Delpuech is an opera singer and a journalist. She has worked for the independent Tunisian media outlet Inkyfada and for the investigative network Forbidden Stories. Their Gaza Project, a collaborative investigation conducted with 13 media organizations around the world, demonstrated the targeting of journalists in Gaza. She now contributes freelance pieces to independent French media such as Blast, Mediapart and Le Monde Diplomatique. She was a finalist for the True Story Award in 2024.

Aigerim Berdibaeva is a journalist, documentary filmmaker, media specialist, communicator, and blogger. Currently, she works as a journalist at "Azattyk Media," where she hosts the "Daniste" program and also anchors the "Eje-Sindiler" program. Aigerim Akylbekova produces programs on social issues. Aigerim Akylbekova has worked as a communicator on various UN projects in Kyrgyzstan and implemented campaigns in the media to promote women's rights.

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Airaj (Reg) Jilani spent his career in the oil and gas industry. He began as a field piping engineer and worked his way up to become the Project Director of a major oil and gas contractor in Houston, Texas. His work on multi-billion-dollar projects took him across the U.S. and around the world, including Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Nigeria, and other countries.

Alejandro Aravena graduated as an architect from Universidad Católica de Chile in 1992. Between 2000 and 2005 he was a professor at Harvard University, where he founded Elemental, a "Do Tank" founded in 2001. Elemental is led by Alejandro Aravena along with partners Gonzalo Arteaga, Juan Cerda, Victor Oddó, and Diego Torres.

In 2010 he was named Honorary International Fellow of the Royal Institute of Architects. Since 2011, he has been a member of the Council of the Cities Program of the London School of Economics. In 2014, he gave a TED Global Talk. Aravena's and Elemental's works have been recognized by awards including the Silver Lion at Venice Biennale (2008) and the Gothenburg Award for Sustainability (2017). In 2016, Aravena was awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize and was the Curator of the XV Venice Biennale. Since 2020, he has been the President of the Pritzker Prize Jury.

Alexander Kvitashvili is an international health reform leader and former cabinet minister with more than 30 years of experience in healthcare and social protection systems across Eastern Europe and Central Asia. He served as Minister of Health of Ukraine and Minister of Labor, Health and Social Affairs of Georgia. During his government service, he managed major public health reform programs, expanded health insurance coverage nationwide in Georgia, and introduced international procurement mechanisms in Ukraine that significantly reduced corruption risks. He also served as rector of Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University and worked for the EastWest Institute, a New York-based independent think tank.

Currently based in Tirana, Albania, Alexander  serves as strategic advisor to the Minister of Health and Social Welfare of Albania, supporting national initiatives in digital health transformation, institutional modernization, and health sector reform. Throughout his career, he has advised governments and international organizations including the WHO, World Bank, UNICEF, and the United States Pharmacopeia.

Alexandre Amirejibi is a machine learning engineer and researcher at the Tbilisi Information Collective. His work focuses on modeling the behavior of information actors in cyberspace and exploring how digital platforms can be better aligned with human needs and values.
His ongoing projects involve computationally modeling the coverage bias of news organizations and work on TIC's news aggregator Nakadi.News. Currently, he is pursuing an MSc in Artificial Intelligence at Utrecht University.

Alexandre Kordzaia, known professionally as Kordz, is a Georgian electronic music Producer and composer.

Raised between Georgia and Switzerland in a musical family, he developed an early passion for both classical and contemporary music. Kordz's music blends classical influences with electronic and funk icons like Prince, James Brown, and Ryuichi Sakamoto. His work spans downtempo, ambient, and experimental electronic music, often incorporating orchestral elements.

With over 4.5 million total streams as of April 2026, Kordz continues to be an important presence on Georgia’s electronic and classical music scenes.

Alex Beard is a critically acclaimed writer and educator. His book Natural Born Learners is a user's guide to transforming learning in the twenty-first century, taking readers on a dazzling global tour into the future of education, from Silicon Valley to Seoul, Helsinki to Hounslow. After starting out as an English teacher in a London comprehensive, he completed his MA at the Institute of Education before joining Teach For All, a growing global network of organizations working to ensure that all children fulfil their potential. He is fortunate to spend his time travelling the world in search of the practices that will shape the future of learning and has written about his experiences for the Guardian, Financial Times, Evening Standard, Independent and Wired.

Alice Zhuravel is a Ukrainian social researcher and entrepreneur who engages in cross-disciplinary activity aimed at fostering positive, cohesive, and sustainable futures. Over the past two years, in response to the polycrisis following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Alice has been actively engaged in humanitarian and social work. Drawing upon her professional background at the intersection of humanitarianism and creativity, this year Alice founded TOZHSAMIST, a social initiative that’s an experiential platform for multidisciplinary discussion aimed at creating a more cohesive and sustainable future. Raised in Ukrainian society as a biracial person, Alice brings to the forefront an intercultural and multi-perspective mindset. Alice studied History (BSc: Kharkiv, Ukraine), and researched Ukrainian Identity as a fellow at CIRCE (Creative Impact Research Center Europe, Berlin, Germany).

A journalist specializing on women’s rights and gender equality in Kyrgyzstan. Bachelor’s degree from American University in Central Asia (Journalism and Mass Communication) and Master’s degree from Syracuse University (Public Administration). Experience in working as a journalist since 2012. Besides journalism, Aliya has worked for a number of international organizations based in Bishkek (Internews Kyrgyzstan, Soros-Foundation Kyrgyzstan, ACCELS, etc.) as a producer, communications specialist and media expert.

Alix Dunn is the founder and CEO of The Maybe, a media studio and collective challenging the power and politics of tech. She hosts the weekly podcast “Computer Says Maybe.” She is also an advisor and board member for organizations working to reshape technology and politics through research, organizing, and strategic litigation in the U.S., the EU, and beyond.

Allison Ekberg (Dvaladze) is a public health advisor with the World Health Organization supporting countries to tackle non-communicable diseases, the leading cause of avoidable death and disability worldwide. She is driven by challenging assumptions and narratives, rethinking who and what shapes our well-being and addressing the growing market for health and wellness disinformation.

Beyond her work, she led a successful campaign to change federal legislation on sexual harassment in the U.S. transportation sector and was a member of the 2018 Sail Like a Girl team, the first all-female crew to win the Race to Alaska.

Aman Sethi is the Editor in Chief of openDemocracy and the author of A Free Man. He was previously the Executive Editor for Strategy at BuzzFeed News and Editor-in-Chief of HuffPost India. His work spans tech, labour, migration, conflict and surveillance and has appeared in Granta, the Guardian, The New York Times, The Hindu, and Foreign Policy.

Amy Mackinnon is a staff writer for Foreign Policy magazine. She began her journalism career as a freelancer in her native Scotland before moving to Moscow, where she joined the media start-up Coda Story as senior editor. Amy received a 2018 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia award for her reporting on homophobic vigilantes for the radio documentary “Russia’s New Scapegoats,” co-produced by Coda Story and Reveal. Her work has been published by BBC Radio Scotland, Slate, CNN, and Vice, among others. She has a master’s in Russian and East European studies from the University of Glasgow and Corvinus University of Budapest, and a master’s degree from the Newmark Graduate School of Journalism. Although she is originally from Scotland, Americans can understand her accent just fine. Really.

Ana Prieto is a journalist and author from Argentina who specializes in mental health, extremism, and disinformation. She serves as a consultant for the Spanish chapter of the International Journalists’ Network, a project of the International Center for Journalists. Ana spent five years at Agence France-Presse (AFP) as an editor and trainer in digital investigation techniques and fact-checking. Since 2023, she has been leading media literacy workshops for vulnerable communities in Buenos Aires.

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Andres Ilves spent over 20 years with the BBC and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, where he was responsible for coverage in local languages in places from Africa to Afghanistan to the Caucasus to Central Asia. He has also worked in numerous other sectors, from the NGO field in the Balkans to local government and politics in California. Starting with his native Estonian, Andres has added on numerous other languages, from the major European ones to Swahili, Dari, Pashto, and Zulu. He graduated with a degree in Near Eastern Studies from Princeton University in the US; in his free time he writes fiction and listens to hip hop.

Andrés Juan Guerrero Rubiano was severely injured on September 26, 2019, at the Universidad Distrital of Colombia, when Colombian Mobile Anti-Riot Squad (ESMAD) police decided to shoot him directly in the eyes. He is now finishing his undergraduate degree in social sciences. An avid footballer, he was forced to stop playing due his eye trauma. He is also passionate about motorcycles and teaching.

Andrey Babitskiy is a journalist. Before leaving Russia in February 2022, he has reported and provided political commentary for a number of Russia's (then existing) media of record. After moving to Tbilisi, Andrey has been working on a podcast, «Снова никогда» (“Never, again”), dedicated to the ethical and historical aspects of the man-made catastrophe we are living through. His article ახალი ხორცი [Fresh Meat] has made the case for learning and speaking Georgian.

Ane Breivik is the former president of the Young Liberals of Norway and a current candidate in the 2025 Norwegian parliamentary elections. She was elected as a deputy member of the Norwegian Parliament at 23 and has represented the Liberal Party on the Finance Committee.
An active participant in Norwegian public debate, Ane regularly writes book reviews for the political newspaper Altinget and has contributed essays to Vårt Land. She currently resides in Istanbul, where she is completing her MA in Law through an Erasmus exchange at Koç University.
Ane wrote her thesis on EU/EEA law at the University of Bergen and is affiliated with the think tank Langsikt.

Anka Koiava is a designer and co-founder of RECKLESS, a purpose-driven streetwear brand that uses fashion as a platform for protest and cultural commentary. With a multidisciplinary background in graphic, interior, and clothing design, she approaches every project with a focus on creative problem-solving.
At ZEG Fest, Anka represents RECKLESS in amplifying Gen Z voices and driving conversations around identity, gender roles, and collective responsibility. Her work blends cultural awareness with visual disruption, transforming garments into bold, wearable statements.

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Anna Fifield is a New Zealand journalist focused on Asia. She is the Asia-Pacific editor at the Washington Post and spent 20 years abroad as a foreign correspondent for the Post and the Financial Times, with postings in Beijing, Tokyo and Seoul. She is the author of The Great Successor: The Secret Rise and Rule of Kim Jong Un. Anna won Stanford University's Shorenstein Journalism Award for Asia coverage in 2018 and was a Nieman Journalism Fellow at Harvard University in 2013-2014.

Anna Kazlauskas is the creator of Vana and CEO of Open Data Labs, building a network for user-owned data. Vana enables users to maintain sovereignty over their data while allowing developers to access next-generation datasets for AI training. Users can own both their data and the value it creates, including AI models trained on it.

Anna studied computer science and economics at MIT, where she first got into crypto by mining Ethereum in her dorm room in 2015. After leaving MIT, she founded a YC-backed machine learning company and contributed to Celo. Her research at MIT's CSAIL, the Federal Reserve, and the World Bank shaped her vision of data as the currency of the future.

Anna Myroniuk is the head of investigations and a cofounder at the Kyiv Independent. She is an award-winning journalist who investigated wrongdoings in the Ukraine army's leadership. Myroniuk also ran projects on political and corporate misconduct, illicit tobacco trade, and fraud in healthcare amid the Covid-19 pandemic. She has been extensively covering Russia's war against Ukraine since 2014.

Anna Reismann currently represents the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung in Uganda and South Sudan. Previously she was based in Brussels and Ukraine and worked as political advisor on Andean countries and Central America at the headquarters of the foundation.

Professor Anna Whitelock is a historian, author and broadcaster. She is Professor of the History of Monarchy at City, University of London. Anna is an international media commentator on monarchy, public history and heritage, and the Tudors and Stuarts. She is the Principal Investigator on a major AHRC project: The Visible Crown: Queen Elizabeth II in the Caribbean: 1952-present.

Anne Avis is a board member of Internews, Montana Free Press, and Tinworks Art in Bozeman, Montana. She has served on numerous nonprofit boards and previously co-chaired the boards of KQED and Internews. Anne lives in Clyde Park, Montana, with her husband, Greg. They have three grown children. Raised in Massachusetts, she is a graduate of Williams College and an alumna of the National Outdoor Leadership School.

Anshel Pfeffer has been reporting on Israeli and international affairs for twenty-two years. He is currently a senior correspondent and columnist for Haaretz and the Israel correspondent of The Economist, as well as reporting regularly from Israel for The Times, The Sunday Times and The Jewish Chronicle. Over the course of his career, he has covered politics, security, education, religion, the Jewish diaspora, as well as reporting from over thirty countries.His critically-acclaimed biography, Bibi: The Turbulent Life and Times of Benjamin Netanyahu was published in 2018.

Anusha Alikhan is Chief Communications Officer at the Wikimedia Foundation, the global nonprofit that operates Wikipedia, one of the top 10 most visited websites in the world. Before joining the Wikimedia Foundation, she was communications director for Knight Foundation, a leading funder of journalism and media innovation. She previously served as a communications officer with the United Nations advancing global peacekeeping initiatives, and has worked as a freelance journalist and editor covering local news and events in New York City. Before that, Anusha practiced employment and human rights law in her hometown of Toronto, Canada. She serves on the boards of The Communications Network and National Urban Fellows.

Anya Schiffrin is the director of the Technology, Media, and Communications specialization at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs and a senior lecturer who teaches on global media, innovation and human rights.  She writes on journalism and development, investigative reporting in the global south and has published extensively over the last decade on the media in Africa. More recently she has become focused on solutions to the problem of online disinformation, earning her PhD (with honors) on the topic from the University of Navarra. She is the editor of Women in the Digital World, (Routledge, April 2023) Global Muckraking: 100 Years of Investigative Reporting from Around the World (New Press, 2014) and African Muckraking: 75 years of Investigative journalism from Africa (Jakana 2017) She is the editor of Media Capture: How Money, Digital Platforms and Governments Control the News (Columbia University Press 2021.) Dr. Schiffrin's work with economist Haaris Mateen on the valuation of news has been cited in the Atlantic, Financial Times, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Washington Post and many other publications. She is a leading thinker and commentator on AI and publishing, media sustainability as well as mis/disinformation and media impact.

Armando Iannucci is a writer, director, and broadcaster whose critically acclaimed work spans television, film, radio, and stage. In 2005, Iannucci created the BBC series “The Thick of It,” which received widespread recognition, earning 13 BAFTA nominations and 5 wins. The success of the series also led to the 2009 film “In the Loop,” which earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay. Armando then went on to create the HBO series “Veep.” The show explored the American political system through the character of Selina Meyer, winning several prestigious awards, including four Emmy Awards for Outstanding Comedy Series.

In 2017 he published “Hear Me Out,” a new book on classical music and released the feature film “The Death of Stalin” which received 2 BAFTA nominations and won Best Comedy at the European Film Awards. In 2019, he directed “The Personal History of David Copperfield,” which won Best Screenplay at both the WGBA and BIFA, while also earning a Golden Globe nomination.

Armando  returned to HBO with “Avenue 5,” a sci-fi comedy about a luxury space cruise ship that goes off course, starring Hugh Laurie. The series was nominated for both a Golden Globe and an Emmy.

In 2024, he adapted Stanley Kubrick's “Dr. Strangelove” for the stage, reimagining the film as a live theatrical production. The stage version received acclaim for its bold take on Kubrick’s political satire and marked Armando’s return to working with Steve Coogan, with whom he created the character, Alan Partridge.

Arwa Damon is a five-time Emmy winning former CNN Senior International Correspondent. While her career has taken her across the globe, she is best known for her coverage of the Middle East, especially out of Iraq and Syria, and for the human stories she brings into her reporting. She is also the recipient of numerous Peabody Awards, the Investigative Reporters and Editors Award for her coverage of the 2012 attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, and the prestigious Courage in Journalism Award by the International Women’s Media Foundation.

In 2015 Arwa founded her charity, the International Network for Aid, Relief, and Assistance, (INARA), that provides comprehensive holistic medical and mental health care for children impacted by war and natural disasters who otherwise would not be receiving treatment.

In 2022 Arwa parted ways with CNN to direct and produce the award-winning documentary “Seize the Summit” and focus on growing and expanding INARA. She is also a non-resident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council.

Ava Lee is the Executive Director of People vs Big Tech, a movement of civil society organisations, activists and experts calling for technology that serves people and not profits. Before that she worked at investigative campaigning organisation Global Witness, where she built and led a team of investigators, researchers, advocates and communications specialists working to combat some of the biggest harms caused by Big Tech companies.

This has included exposing how Meta’s job advertising algorithm discriminates along gender lines, breaching equalities legislation, and a series of investigations that have demonstrated how companies including Meta, TikTok, X and YouTube are unprepared to deal with incitement to genocide and violence (in Myanmar and Ethiopia), and are equally unprepared to deal with serious electoral misinformation ahead of significant elections (including in the US, Brazil, Kenya, UK, South Africa, Ireland and India).

Aziza Raimberdieva is a digital editor with expertise in data and visual storytelling. She founded one of the first data teams in Central Asia at Kloop.kg. She worked on impactful projects which were awarded and shortlisted for Cannes Lions and Sigma Awards. Now Aziza is RFE/RL's Levin-Utkin Fellow.

Bao Nguyen is an award-winning Vietnamese American filmmaker and founding partner of EAST Films, a transpacific production company based in Los Angeles and Vietnam. His work has been seen on HBO, Netflix, The New York Times, and Arte, among others. He directed “Be Water,” an intimate portrait of Bruce Lee that competed in the U.S. Documentary Competition at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival, was invited to screen at SXSW, Cannes, Telluride, and Hot Docs, and became the most-watched ESPN 30 for 30 film of all time.

Bao’s feature documentary “The Greatest Night in Pop,” about the making of “We Are the World,” premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival, debuted as the number one film globally on Netflix, won the PGA Award and Critics Choice Award, and received a Grammy and Primetime Emmy nomination. He directed the critically acclaimed film, “The Stringer,” which premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival and was released on Netflix. His most recent film, “BTS: The Return,” which was also released on Netflix, chronicles the world's biggest band, BTS, as they return from military service to record their 5th studio album ARIRANG. The film premiered in the top 10 in 85 countries including reaching the number 1 in 15 countries.

Bao is a member of BAFTA and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, a PBS/WGBH Producers Fellow, a Firelight Media Documentary Lab Fellow, a Berlinale Talents alumnus, and a BAFTA US Breakthrough recipient, and holds a BA in Politics/International Relations from NYU and an MFA in Social Documentary Film from the School of Visual Arts.

Barış Altıntaş is an Istanbul-based journalist. Early on in her career, she worked for different news agencies and newspapers in Ankara and Istanbul including the Economic News Agency (EBA) and Turkish Daily News, reporting on politics, women's rights and science. Later, she moved on to working as a freelance journalist, contributing to websites of newspapers and civil society groups such as Tageszeitung and Index on Censorship, writing on freedom of the press and politics. She worked as a justice reporter for various outlets between 2016-2018. She is a co-founder and currently co-director of the Media and Law Studies Association (MLSA), which offers legal assistance to journalists in peril and professional support to journalists and lawyers who work on free speech cases.

Becky Lipscombe is Coda Story’s senior audio producer and oversaw Coda’s two documentary series for Audible: Captured and Undercurrents. Before joining Coda Story, Becky spent 20 years as a foreign news producer for the BBC, covering everything from conflicts and coups in Africa and the Middle East to tsunamis and terrorism in Asia. While based in Africa, she produced the award-winning series Blood Lands for BBC Radio, and BBC News’ first virtual reality documentary films: Damming the Nile and Congo VR.

Betelihem Melkamu Essa's story begins in Geza, a rural village in the Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples Region (SNNPR) of Ethiopia, where she spent the first decade of her life in a close-knit community without electricity, running water, or cell phones but with love, community, and hope. In 2015, at the age of 10, Essa was adopted and moved to Mexico City with her mother. She attended The American School Foundation, where she was a member of the Cross Country and Track and Field teams. After three and a half years, they relocated to California, where Essa attended Girls Middle School and Menlo School. Essa held roles in student government and at Object, a non-profit organization that hosts inspirational talks by successful women to empower young girls. In 2020, Essa was selected as a T-Mobile ChangeMaker for her work with Object, participating in workshops co-led by John Legere and Nadya Okamoto. She has decided to attend Skidmore College in the fall, and she's incredibly excited and proud about it.

Prof. Bipasha Ghosh teaches AI and business strategy at the Sy Syms School of Business at Yeshiva University in New York City, and lectures at journalism schools on how AI is reshaping the media. As a consultant, she helps companies and communities navigate the practical and ethical challenges of AI adoption.

In a previous life,  Bipasha spent two decades as a senior media executive, leading international marketing teams for NBC Universal, Reuters, BBC, and CNN in New York, Singapore, and Hong Kong.

Bobby Ghosh is a columnist, writing mainly about geopolitics and global culture, with a special interest in food, football and foreign policy. He is also a TV commentator, appearing mainly on CNN and MS NOW.

Bobby has been a foreign correspondent on six of the seven continents, and is hoping someone will commission him to write about penguins, so he can complete the set. As an editor, he has led newsrooms in New York, London, Hong Kong and New Delhi. His career of over four decades includes stints at Time Magazine, Bloomberg, Quartz and Hindustan Times.

Brad Barton is a magician and mentalist who combines psychology, comedy, and audience participation to create astonishing performances. For 30 years, he has worked to redefine the "magic show" as a medium for investigating deeper human truths and the intimate connection between a performer and their audience.

Based in San Francisco since 2009, Brad’s career has ranged from performing for the Coppola family and Andrew Garfield to backstage appearances for Phish at Madison Square Garden and Prince’s final shows at the Fillmore.

Whether performing his decade-long sell-out residency at San Francisco’s The Lost Church or his current work, The Gift — which explores resilience and gratitude through the Japanese art of Kintsugi — Brad’s performances center on the shared experience of what is possible. He also (infamously) once stole Tom Waits’ watch.

Branko Brick started his book publishing career in 1984 in what was then Yugoslavia. The highlights included the complete works of William Shakespeare, Complete Greek Tragedies and Miroslav’s Gospel, the Serbian nation’s holiest book, which was included in Unesco’s Memory of the World upon re-publication. In South Africa, Branko launched, and edited, several publications, including the magazines Timbila, Brainstorm, Maverick and Empire, and the newspaper 168, South Africa’s final weekend newspaper. In late 2009, Branko launched Daily Maverick, an online daily with readership of 12-million monthly unique visitors as of 20 March 2023. In June 2018, Branko won Nat Nakasa Award for Media Integrity, considered South Africa’s premier journalism award. The #GuptaLeaks, Daily Maverick’s most famous contribution so far, in collaboration with amaBhungane and News24, brought many more awards, among them the 2019 Global Shining Light Award, shared with Maria Ressa’s The Rappler in Philippines.

Branko Brkic is founder of PROJECT KONTINUUM, a global initiative to advance journalism, media innovation, and sustainability.  He is former Editor-in-Chief of Daily Maverick, South Africa’s leading online daily which he co-founded in 2009.  Branko’s career spans 40 years and includes a book publishing house in Yugoslavia, editing a business and tech magazine in South Africa and launching Maverick and Empire magazines.

Brent Katz is a filmmaker and journalist. He directed the short film “JOSH'S WEDDING,” coming out through the New Yorker,  about the tensions between AI and human creativity, told through the story of best friends, the comedy writer Simon Rich and the high-level Open AI computer scientist Dan Selsam.

Brent has written and produced podcasts for Audible, Spotify, iHeart Radio and has written for The New Yorker, New York Times Magazine, The Paris Review and elsewhere. He wrote and produced the podcast “RORSCHACH: MURDER AT CITY HALL” for iHeart Radio based on his thesis from Columbia Journalism School.

Caoilfhionn Gallagher KC is one of the world’s leading human rights lawyers. Over the past 25 years she has acted in many landmark cases in the UK, Europe and internationally, including representing bereaved families of the Hillsborough Disaster and the 7/7 London Bombings, and in test cases which have changed laws on children’s rights, women’s rights and freedom of expression.

Internationally, Caoilfhionn’s work for wrongfully imprisoned people has seen her take on governments around the world, and she has secured the freedom of over 85 wrongly imprisoned journalists, bloggers, cartoonists, businesspeople, and activists (and one rapper). She is the world’s leading expert on accountability for deaths of journalists and regularly acts for bereaved families of journalists killed for their work. Caoilfhionn was appointed a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in 2017 for her “outstanding contribution to the protection of human rights.” In 2023 she was awarded the President of Ireland’s Distinguished Service Award and in 2025 she was Irish Tatler’s International Woman of the Year.

Carissa Véliz is an Associate Professor in Philosophy at the Institute for Ethics in AI, and a Fellow at Hertford College at the University of Oxford. She is the recipient of the 2021 Herbert A. Simon Award for Outstanding Research in Computing and Philosophy. She is the author of the highly-acclaimed Privacy Is Power (an Economist book of the year, 2020) and the editor of the Oxford Handbook of Digital Ethics. She is a member of UNESCO’s Women 4 Ethical AI. She advises companies and policymakers around the world on privacy and the ethics of AI. She is a board member of the Proton Foundation, along with Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Proton’s CEO Andy Yen.

Carole Cadwalladr is a renowned Pulitzer-nominated journalist for the Guardian, feature writer for the Observer, and Cambridge Analytica investigator. She formerly worked at The Daily Telegraph, and was nominated for numerous Press Awards.

Cadwalladr was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for National Reporting in 2019, receiving praise upon her investigation and coverage into Cambridge Analytica and its role in Brexit. Cadwalladr’s sheer dedication in exposing a nexus of corruption that resulted in Mark Zuckerberg being called before Congress, and exposing Cambridge Analytica’s role in mass-harvesting data to influence elections (Brexit and Trump), goes far beyond the question of Remain or Leave. Her investigation also interrogates the role we have been puppeteered to play in a 2017 Britain that took its first step into an undemocratic world.

In April 2019, Cadwalladr gave a TED talk, “Facebook’s role in Brexit – and the threats to democracy”, regarding her the links found between Facebook and the Brexit election.   This talk led to worldwide acclaim but it also sparked a three year long lawsuit which was won by Carole in June 2022.  This case was one of several brought against her and other leading journalists and they are thought to be motivated by powerful individuals and firms to tie up the press in expensive and time consuming legal defenses (these are called SLAPP suits).

Also in 2019, she was featured in the acclaimed Netflix documentary ‘The Great Hack‘ – this Bafta nominated film explored the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal, produced and directed by Jehane Noujaim and Karim Amer.

Cadwalladr has won other awards, including the British Journalism Awards: Technology Journalism Award in December 2017 and The Orwell Prize for political journalism in 2018. She is the author of The Family Tree, published in 2006 and was shortlisted for the 2006 Commonwealth Writers Prize.  She is currently at work on a new book.

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Carrie Goldberg is a lawyer who fights psychos, stalkers, perverts, and Big Tech.

Her Brooklyn-based law firm, C.A. Goldberg, PLLC, pioneered product liability cases against tech companies. Her favorite defendants are Amazon, xAI, Snap, Discord, and Match Group.

Carrie is the author of “Nobody’s Victim,” a New York Times Editors' Choice.

Cate Adams is the Vice President at Warner Bros. Pictures

Cesar Kuriyama, the visionary behind 1 Second Everyday, began his career as a director and VFX artist, crafting visual narratives that captivated audiences. His personal endeavor to capture the essence of daily life by recording a second of video every day—a practice he's faithfully maintained for over 12 years—was introduced to a global audience through his TED Talk in 2012 with over 2 million views. This sparked widespread interest and led to the creation of the 1SE app, empowering others to embrace a similar journey. Today, under Cesar's guidance, the 1SE team, comprised of 16 dedicated humans from around the world, passionately develops tools that enable individuals to chronicle and deeply connect with their own stories and experiences.

Born in Peru and raised in the United States as a math and science nerd, Cesar's love for storytelling eventually led him to study multiple artistic disciplines at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY. Before launching 1SE, he worked in the advertising world with notable clients like BMW, Verizon, and the NFL. His personally produced work has garnered millions of views and been featured in Fast Company, Wired, CNN, and The New York Times. He has also taught courses at NYU and Pratt Institute.

Imagine a movie that includes every day of the rest of your life.

Chas Edwards is the general manager for Reuters Events, a unit of Thomson Reuters that produces more than 50 annual business conferences and trade shows around the world. Since 2023, his work with Airbnb, CalMatters, CatchLight, Wait What, Walking Cinema, and others has focused on business transformation, product development, and experience design.

From 2012 to 2023, Chas was co-founder, president, and publisher of Pop-Up Magazine Productions, which produced the California Sunday Magazine and the touring show, Pop-Up Magazine, which the New York Times called “a sensation,” and New York Magazine deemed “Highbrow / Brilliant.” Pop-Up Magazine received  17 National Magazine Award nominations, a Pulitzer Prize, a James Beard Award, a Livingston Award, a George Polk Award, two Magazine of the Year Awards from the Society of Publication Designers, and an AI-AP's International Motion Arts Award.

Pop-Up Magazine Productions appeared on Fast Company’s list of World's Most Innovative Companies, Ad Age’s A-List for best event creators in media, and received the Mark Twain Award for Storytelling from the Tribeca Film Festival. Chas Edwards was included in the FOLIO 100 and  Ad Age’s Creativity 50 list.

Prior to Pop-Up Magazine, Chas was co-founder of Federated Media, publisher and chief revenue officer at Digg, and an executive at CNET Networks. Along the way he helped launch a cable TV network, raised money for Youth Speaks, worked at tech startups and print magazines, and passed a typing test to land his first media-industry job, in book publishing.

Cristian Lupşa is the founder and editor of DoR (Decât o Revistă), a quarterly magazine devoted to narrative journalism and telling the stories of modern day Romania. He also writes, lectures, and trains people on the transformational impact true stories can have on a culture still seeking its identity. Cristian graduated from the University of Bucharest in 2003, and then, in 2005, earned an MA in Journalism from the University of Missouri-Columbia, the world’s oldest journalism school. He returned to Romania in 2007, and joined Esquire Romania as a senior editor. In 2009, Cristian and a group of rebellious journalists started DoR, a magazine – though some would call it a movement – predicated on the idea that good nonfiction storytelling can change people and communities. In 2011, continuing the mission of DoR, they started The Power of Storytelling, an international storytelling conference which has grown to be the largest in the region. Cristian is also an alumni of Aspen Institute Romania’s Young Leaders program. He spent the 2013-2014 academic year as a fellow at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.

Christopher Wylie is a social researcher and data scientist. He has served as a senior adviser in both the British and Canadian governments, and has extensive experience using technology to improve communication and citizen engagement. With an avid interest in cultural applications of technology, his postgraduate research focused on fashion trend forecasting. Christopher is the former Director of Research for Cambridge Analytica and SCL Group, which was a UK-based military contractor specializing in information warfare. He witnessed firsthand how culture, information and algorithms were being weaponized by militaries, governments and companies to undermine elections around the world. In 2018, Wylie worked with The Guardian and New York Times as a whistleblower to expose how social media data was being exploited and turned against ordinary citizens. His testimonies at the United States Congress and British Parliament served as a wake-up call for many and have quickly led to new legislative proposals in both countries.

Christoph Plate is the Director of the Media Programme for South East Europe at the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, based in Sofia, Bulgaria. Previously, he held the same position for Sub-Saharan Africa.

In the 1990s, Christoph worked as a contributing Africa correspondent for Der Spiegel, reporting on the war in Somalia and the genocide in Rwanda. He later joined the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, where he spent a decade covering the Middle East as the Sunday edition editor and reporter. Christoph also served as Deputy Editor-in-Chief of the Schwäbische Zeitung in southwestern Germany.

Cinthia Membreño is the Audience Loyalty Manager of CONFIDENCIAL, an independent Nicaraguan media outlet working in exile, in Costa Rica. She leads its Membership Program and yearly donation campaigns, as well as the initiatives that bring journalists and readers together.

Claudia Milne is an Emmy- and Peabody Award-winning producer and a highly experienced senior executive who has led journalism teams across multiple platforms and editorial beats. As the former Head of Standards at CBS News she managed a small team that oversaw the integrity and fairness of all of CBS News’ content across television, digital and audio. Claudia left CBS News in October 2025. She has been at the forefront of innovating new programing and storytelling formats for international and American audiences at the BBC, Bloomberg and ProPublica.

Clém Pouré is the 2024 AI Accountability Fellow at the Pulitzer Center. They are a freelance journalist based in Paris, covering the intersection of technology and social issues.
They have focused their reporting on surveillance in public spaces, publishing dozens of stories in the French investigative outlet Mediapart and other news media.
Deepening their work on public liberties, Clém has recently shifted their focus to the workplace, examining the impact of AI-powered algorithmic surveillance on workers’ daily lives.

Daniel Howden is the founder and director of Lighthouse Reports, an award-winning investigative newsroom working on deeply-reported public interest stories with some of the world’s leading media.  is an experienced long-form writer, reporter, and investigations editor. He  runs a team across four continents, which has included staff exiled from Syria, Sudan, Myanmar, and Afghanistan.

Daniel is a member of the board at the Global Investigative Journalism Network. Previously, he spent much of his career as a correspondent for international media including the Economist, The Guardian, The Independent and Reuters. In recent years, Daniel has focused on technology and power, as well as migration. He was a fellow at Oxford University’s Refugee Studies Centre, as well as a senior editor on Refugees Deeply.

Dani Tabukashvili is a political scientist and cultural studies scholar. The focus of her research is on collective memory, places of remembrance, and historical memory formation in Georgia. She works at the Konrad Adenauer Foundation and coordinates projects in the fields of political education and social development. As a native of Tbilisi, she has always been fascinated by the urban legends and stories of her city. She witnessed the dramatic events in Georgia following the collapse of the Soviet Union, which profoundly changed the country's culture and identity. In her free time, she works as a tour guide and enjoys sharing these stories with others.

Dan Klein has taught Improvisation at Stanford University for 20 years. He is an Advanced Lecturer in the Theater Department and Lecturer of Management in the Graduate School of Business, a Core Communications Lecturer for the Knight-Hennessey Scholars and Instructor at the d.school. He teaches Creativity, Collaboration and Connection at for organizations around the world including Google, Meta, Youtube, Netflix, Visa and TBC Bank in Tbilisi.

Darya is a teacher, artist, and charity and relief worker. A graduate of the philology department at St Petersburg State University. While in Russia, Daria started Russki Kak Prostoy – a project aimed at providing Russian language lessons to adult migrants and refugees. She has held art performances since 2013, edited two collections of feminist fairytales, and organised anti-military festivals in Finland, and numerous feminist and environmental initiatives. At the end of 2020, Daria was designated a "foreign agent" by the Russian government. Daria has been living and working in Tbilisi for the last three years.

David Belt is the founder and managing principal of Macro-Sea, a creative real estate development firm he launched in 2009. His work spans traditional at-risk development,  adaptive reuse of abandoned spaces, and public art installations that reimagine the role of design in urban environments. Macro-Sea’s projects have been exhibited at Venice Biennale and the MoMA Design and Violence Exhibition.

David is also the co-founder, CEO, and executive chairman of Newlab, a venture platform for critical technology established in 2016. Through public-private collaboration, Newlab advances a new model of technology-driven economic development. In 2023, under David’s design leadership, the company opened a 270,000 sq ft innovation space in Detroit’s Michigan Central District, now home to over 100 companies and 700 innovators focused on mobility and decarbonization.

In 2020, David sold his firm, DBI to its employees. DBI specialized in project management, development, and consulting, delivering over $1 billion in real estate projects across the U.S., France, Italy, Germany, Spain, and beyond.

David was named one of NYC’s 50 Most Powerful People in Tech in 2018, one of Brooklyn’s 100 Most Influential People in 2019 and one of the top 400 people shaping creative America  in 2023 and 2024.

He currently serves on the Board of OceanX Education and as Vice Chair of the Board at Pioneer Works, where he is helping lead the development of New York City’s first public observatory.

Davide Monteleone is a visual artist, researcher, and National Geographic Fellow whose work spans photography, visual journalism, writing, and interdisciplinary projects. His practice explores complex themes, including geopolitics, geography, identity, data, and science. Originally from Italy, Monteleone spent over a decade in Russia between 2000 and 2021, where he developed his early series and published four acclaimed monographs: Dusha (2007), Red Thistle (2012), Spasibo (2013), and The April Theses (2017).

Monteleone’s work has been featured in prominent publications such as National Geographic, Time, and The New Yorker and exhibited in renowned venues, including the Saatchi Gallery in London, the Nobel Peace Center in Oslo, the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris, and the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome. His 2022 project Sinomocene, a data-driven investigation into China’s economic expansion, materialised as both an exhibition and a book, furthering his commitment to narratives that merge visual storytelling with investigative research.

In 2024, he completed Critical Minerals—Geography of Energy, an exploration into the geopolitical and environmental stakes of energy transition resources, which continues his examination of climate and economic impacts on a global scale.
Among Monteleone’s numerous accolades are the Leica Oskar Barnack Award (2024), the Deloitte Photo Grant (2024), the National Geographic Fellowship (2019), the Asia Society Fellowship (2016), and the Carmignac Photojournalism Award (2013). He holds a Master’s in Art and Politics from Goldsmiths, University of London, and is actively engaged as a curator and educator across various public and private institutions.

David Owen co-founded IDEA in 2009 with his partner Angela Hill. The company began by sourcing rare vintage art and design reference books for the fashion industry, with retail spaces in Colette and Dover Street Market, London. Interest in IDEA grew rapidly via Instagram and the company turned to publishing with titles by photographers including Willy Vanderperre, Alasdair McLellan, Glen Luchford and brands like Palace Skateboards, Vetements, Stussy and Gucci. IDEA also began to produce merchandise including bags and hats and apparel. IDEA shirts and sweatshirts are now carried in 40 stores worldwide. IDEA also consults on Instagram and social media for a number of companies and runs a motion graphics studio. 2019 will see new books published by Self Service, Harmony Korine for Gucci, Purienne and Harley Weir.

Dessi Damianova, Chief Operating Officer of Bellingcat, leads organizational development, fundraising, and finance. Bellingcat is an independent investigative collective of researchers, investigators, and citizen journalists brought together by a passion for open-source research. Damianova has over 25 years of experience as a journalist, editor, and C-suite executive in the non-profit media development sector. She previously set up large investigative journalism programs in Asia, Africa, and Eastern Europe, working at many prominent newsrooms and media organizations, including BBC World Service, Al Jazeera, Reuters, Press Now, Free Voice, and Free Press Unlimited.

Diana Deliurman is a Ukrainian journalist, photographer, and local producer. She serves as the global communications manager at the Lviv Media Forum and is a reporter for Frontliner, where she specializes in in-depth, long-form reportage from both frontline and rear territories.

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Since 2021, her work has been featured in The Telegraph, The Kyiv Independent, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and The Ukrainians, among other outlets. Additionally, Diana works as a local producer facilitating comprehensive coverage for international media organizations.

Dr. Adio-Adet Dinika is a researcher at the Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR), where he co-leads the Data Workers’ Inquiry, a global project documenting the hidden labour that powers artificial intelligence. His work focuses on data workers across Africa and the Global South, from content moderators in Nairobi to annotators in Madagascar, uncovering the human costs of AI’s rapid expansionA political scientist by training, Adio combines scholarship and activism to confront the colonial logics embedded in AI, advancing an ethics of accountability and worker-led, decolonial futures. He has conducted fieldwork in Zimbabwe, Kenya, Rwanda, and South Africa, and his essays and op-eds have appeared in outlets including Noema Magazine and Africa in Fact. He is also an advisory member of ZeMKI at the University of Bremen, in Germany.

Dzmitry Hurnievic is a correspondent in Prague for RFE/RL's Belarus Service. He graduated from the Institute of Media Education and Journalism of the Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski University in Warsaw. He worked for Polish Radio (2006-2016) and Belsat TV (2007-2016). He has been with RFE/RL since 2016.

Ed Caesar is a staff writer for The New Yorker. He is the author of two books, most recently The Moth and the Mountain, which tells the story of a solo attempt to climb Everest in 1934, and was named a Times and Sunday Times book of the year, among other awards. As a journalist, he has covered war, organised crime, financial crime, and some more enjoyable things, like DJs, tennis matches, and the world's largest diamond. Kevin Costner once asked him if he was "anxious to die". He is not.

Ekow Eshun is a writer and award-winning curator. He is Chairman of the Fourth Plinth, overseeing Britain’s foremost public art programme,  and the former Director of the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London. Described by Vogue as ‘the most inspired – and inspiring – curator in Britain’, his critically acclaimed exhibitions include “In the Black Fantastic” at the Hayward Gallery, and the landmark “The Time Is Always Now”, at the National Portrait Gallery, a major study of the Black figure and its representation in contemporary art. He is the author of the memoir Black Gold of the Sun, which was nominated for the Orwell Prize for its exploration of race and identity and is a contributor to publications including the New York Times, Financial Times and the Guardian. He is a judge for the Turner Prize 2024 and was a member of the jury for the British Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2024. He holds an honorary doctorate from London Metropolitan University.

Elena Nechaeva is a journalist, producer, blogger, and media trainer. She has been working in television journalism since 2012. Since 2019, she has been actively involved in the digital transformation of traditional media and creating new media on various internet platforms. She is the author of a YouTube blog about disinformation and propaganda. She has been producing the Sisterhood program since 2021 and works on repackage the project for different platforms.

Elene Mikaberidze was born in Georgia in 1988 and spent most of her life in Brussels, Belgium. She studied politics and gained an MA degree in Eastern Europe & Caucasus Studies with a thesis on “The Representation of War and the Narratives of Identity in Modern Georgian Cinema.” She completed film critic courses and worked in cinematography.

In 2016, Elene moved back to Georgia and started to direct her own films. She has worked as a programmer at the Tbilisi International Film Festival and is an alumnus of Filmmakers for Peace by GoEAST IFF, From Script 2 Film, EurasiaDOC, Talent Nest at Vilnius Meeting Point, IDFA Academy and EAVE. Her last projects were supported by the French CNC, the Belgium Film Fund, the Doha Film Institute and the Hubert Bals Fund.

Elene’s first feature documentary “Blueberry Dreams” premiered in 2024 in the Next Wave competition at CPH DOX.

Elise Tillet is the Campaigns and Media Lead for Luminate in Europe where she works to mobilise the public and grow a large and inclusive movement demanding that Big Tech respect human rights and social justice. Previously she worked as a human researcher and advocate in Europe and Asia, focusing on crimes against humanity and human rights abuses.

Eliza Anyangwe is the editor-in-chief of Fuller, the newsroom for global, groundbreaking reporting on women and gender-diverse people. Fuller focuses on deep-dive storytelling that reveals the systems that create and sustain gender inequality and covers —  through its multimedia features, newsletters, social-first video journalism, collaborative investigations and live events — the work to advance equity and dignity.

Eliza is also co-founder of The Gender Beat, a collaborative project to promote nuanced, impactful gender journalism and build a supportive community for those who produce it, particularly in the Majority World.

Before joining Fuller, Eliza led CNN gender inequality reporting team As Equals, with whom she won an EMMY in 2023. She was managing editor of The Correspondent, a platform for constructive, member-funded, ad-free journalism, and has also worked at The Bureau for Investigative Journalism and The Guardian.

Passionate about the transformative power of stories, Eliza has worked across formats, producing the short film, “Not Yet Satisfied” and contributing to Africa’s Media Image in the 21st Century, published by Routledge.

Emanuele Del Rosso is an Italian communication specialist and award-winning political cartoonist. He is currently Head of Communications with the European Press Prize, and Deputy Director of the European Cartoon Award. He publishes his cartoons in several magazines and online newspapers. Among them: Le Monde, Washington Post, Courrier International, Charlie Hebdo, Le Temps, The Japan Times, and the Nation. Since 2016, he has been a member of the Cartoon Movement, and since 2020 a member of Cartooning for Peace. In 2018, he won the second prize in the political cartoon competition “Libex 2018”. He won the Italian “Strike” competition for young talents. In 2019, he won the second prize in the “Inktspotprijs 2019”.

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Emile Ducke is a documentary photographer whose work focuses on Eastern Europe. He has covered Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, from the build-up to all-out war, its outbreak in Kyiv and the immediate aftermath of the occupation of Bucha, to the Russian retreat from Kharkiv region and daily life under shelling in Kherson. He is a regular contributor to The New York Times, and other international publications.

Before 2022, Emile was based in Moscow, where he covered Russia’s tumultuous descent into ever more violent authoritarianism. Over five years, he worked across the country, documenting the realities of daily life far from the capital, from the remote corners of Siberia to the edges of the Russian Arctic. He captured the contradictions of life in Chechnya under the Kadyrov regime, and probed how the legacy of Stalin’s labor camps is being rewritten in Putin’s Russia.

Emily Bell is Director of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia Journalism School. She writes and lectures on the impact of technology and social media on journalism. She is a journalist who worked as a reporter, editor and commentator for the Observer and Guardian for 20 years before joining Columbia University in 2010. She writes for The Guardian, Columbia Journalism Review and frequently appears on international media.

Emily Goligoski researches media consumers to help organizations boost their revenue. She has held management roles at The Atlantic, the future-of-work media company Charter, and the Membership Puzzle Project, a public-interest research initiative at NYU. She was the first user experience researcher embedded at The New York Times. She is also a writer.

Emily has focused her career on ensuring the sustainability of independent journalism, particularly in contexts where its viability is under threat. She is an adjunct professor at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, where she teaches about the business of media.

At Stanford, Emily earned her master’s degree in Learning, Design & Technology and taught at the Stanford design institute (d.school), among other institutions. She reported for Chicago Public Radio (WBEZ) while studying journalism at Northwestern.

Emily Kasriel has had a distinguished career at the BBC for over two decades, with roles as an award-winning journalist, editor and media executive. She created the pan-BBC season “Crossing Divides” and trained 1,000 people in 100 countries in Deep Listening. Emily developed the Deep Listening approach as a Senior Visiting Research Fellow at King's College London Policy Institute, drawing on her experience as an accredited executive coach and workplace mediator.

Emily is now a Visiting Scholar at Columbia University, and was previously a Visiting Fellow at Saïd Business School, Oxford. She is the author of “Deep Listening: Transform Your Relationships with Family, Friends, and Foes.”

Emma Lacey-Bordeaux is a seasoned journalist, speaker and teacher. She serves as senior director for standards and practices at CNN and is an adjunct professor at Georgetown University. In her career Emma has distinguished herself with enterprise reporting and strong leadership. Her work has garnered multiple awards including an Emmy and multiple Peabodys. In 2018 she produced a groundbreaking documentary, “The Feminist on Cellblock Y,”  that continues to be taught in colleges, high schools and middle schools across the United States.

Erica Benner is a political philosopher and historian of ideas. Born in Tokyo, she grew up in Japan and the UK and has taught at Oxford, Yale, and the LSE. Erica currently teaches at the Hertie School for Governance in Berlin and LSE Ideas in London. Her fifth and most recent book, Adventures in Democracy: The Turbulent World of People Power (Penguin Allen Lane 2024), was a Financial Times pick for What to Read in 2024. Her other books include Be Like the Fox (Penguin Allen Lane 2017), a biography of Machiavelli that was shortlisted for the Elizabeth Longford Prize and a BBC Book of the Week.

Erica Hellerstein is a senior reporter with Coda Story. She joined the newsroom in 2020, after spending nearly a decade covering politics and human rights across the U.S. and Latin America for media outlets including The Washington Post, The Atlantic, The Guardian, Marie Claire, Elle, The San Francisco Chronicle, and the San Jose Mercury News.

At Coda, she’s reported on the growing climate grief movement, historical memory in the American South, the expansion of surveillance along the U.S.-Mexico border, and the U.S. librarians caught in the crosshairs of book bans, among other subjects. In 2022, her Coda feature comparing historical reckonings in Germany and the United States won the Online News Association’s award for explanatory reporting. Other work has been recognized by the Society of Professional Journalists, the Society of Environmental Journalists, the Southern Environmental Law Center, the Association for Alternative Newsmedia, and the Clay Felker Prize for Excellence in Longform Journalism. She received her B.A. from the Johns Hopkins University and a Masters in Journalism from the University of California, Berkeley.

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Erzsébet Barát has been the Recurring Visiting Professor in the Department of Gender Studies, CEU since September 2000. She acted as Associate Professor in the Department of English, University of Szeged, Hungary until her retirement in May 2023. She earned her PhD in Linguistics from the Social Sciences Faculty, Lancaster University, UK in 2000. Her research interests include feminist critical theory, queer and transfeminism, relational models of identity, and the relationship between language, power and ideology, with a focus on hate speech and anti-gender politics.

Between 2011 – 2024, she acted as Founding Editor-in-Chief of the Hungarian open access journal, TNTeF: Interdisciplinary e-Journal of Gender Studies; the only academic journal of feminist scholarship in the country. She launched and organized the annual gender studies conference in Hungary at University of Szeged from 2005 to 2021 and acted as founding director of the specialization of ‘Gender through Literatures and Cultures in English’ of the MA in English Studies (2009-2023). She has been invited to run courses in MA and PhD programs across Europe, most recently in 2023 at the University of Sundsvall, Sweden and in 2025 at the Maria Grzegorzewska University, Warsaw, Poland. She has been awarded the Käthe Leichter Guest Professorship in Gender Studies, Universität Wien, Austria in 2013 and 2023. She regularly participate in international research projects; most recently in “Bodies in Transit: Genders, Mobilities, and Interdependencies” funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitivity (2018-2022), and the COST Action Project, “Decolonising Development” (CA 19129)  (2020-2024).

Her academic performance has been acknowledged by Nobilia, the Gender Studies Award, by the Gender Studies Forum, Mid Sweden University, Sundsvall in November 2022, and her perseverance as a scholar by the UNESCO Chair Jubilee Medal by Maria Grzegorzewska University, Warsaw for "relentless research activism in support of gender studies and women's and minority rights" in March 2024. She is a regular contributor to edited volumes and journals in English and Hungarian – both abroad and in Hungary.

Fabiola Torres is the 2024 AI Accountability Fellow at the Pulitzer Center. She is the director of the Peruvian digital health vertical Salud con lupa. An award-winning investigative journalist with 20 years of experience, Fabiola specializes in public health, inequalities, and gender. She is a member of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and has contributed to three of the largest collaborative journalism projects in history: the Panama Papers, Paradise Papers, and Implant Files.

In 2021, Stanford University's Big Local News program supported her project “El Otro Perú,” which documented the pandemic's impact on Indigenous communities in the Peruvian Amazon. From 2020 to 2023, she served as a professor in the Master’s in Science Journalism program at Universidad Javeriana in Colombia. Currently, Fabiola is pursuing a master's degree in creative writing at PUCP.

BIOGRAPHY OF FADY ASLY

-Chairman of ICC Regional Consultative Group (North Africa, Broader Middle East, Caucasus, Central Asia) since 2023
-Member of the Board of Trustees of Dobrodeearium Ukraine since 2022
-Member of UNICEF Business Advisory Board since 2022
-Special Representative of the ICC Global Secretary-General for the Caucasus and Central Asia since 2021
-Chairman of Channel Georgia Consulting since 2016
-Member of the Investor's Council under the Prime Minister of Georgia since 2015
-Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Georgian Mines and Energy since 2012
-Chairman of the International Chamber of Commerce in Georgia since 2008
-Chairman of Agritechnics Holding since 1998

Author of:
-Life with Scorpions-2016
-Mirrors and Illusions- 2020

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Fay Nurse is a journalist and filmmaker with the BBC World Service’s Specialist Hub, where she produces high-impact, long-form multimedia content on topics including gender and identity, religion, the environment, population, and cyber-security. Her project "Georgia’s Stolen Children," released in January 2024, has garnered over a million views on YouTube and reached an additional 6 million people through the BBC news websites.

Federico Acosta Rainis is a data specialist at the Pulitzer Center. Previously an IT consultant, he transitioned into journalism a decade ago, working with La Nación in Argentina, where he has contributed to award-winning projects. Federico received a Chevening Scholarship and was a Google News Initiative Fellow at The Guardian. At the Pulitzer Center, he helps fellows navigate the data side of their investigations—whether that means digging into geospatial analysis, building scrapers, working with satellite imagery, or designing creative methods to crack tough reporting challenges. He also leads training sessions and collaborates on strategies to bring data and storytelling together.

Federico Nejrotti is a writer and co-founder of Ufficio Furore, a design studio creating radical culture. A longtime internet governance enthusiast, he served as head of communications at cheFare, an agency for cultural transformation, and as editor-in-chief of the Italian edition of Motherboard, VICE's science and technology magazine. His passion for strategy video games will outlive him — the first and last beautiful thing he did in his life was a text-based, forum-hosted roleplay game set in the world of “The Legend of Zelda.” There, he was known as the King of Zeldopoli.

Francesca D'Annunzio is the 2024 AI Accountability Fellow at the Pulitzer Center. She is the U.S.-Mexico border and immigration reporter at The Texas Observer, a progressive nonprofit news outlet and print magazine.
Francesca has reported on a variety of topics, including lithium mining, housing and zoning, civilian vigilante groups, Christian nationalism, and misinformation.
Her work has been published or syndicated in The Guardian US, USA Today, The Dallas Morning News, the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting, Religion News Service, the Global Investigative Journalism Network, The Texas Standard, and other outlets.
Francesca’s AI Accountability Fellowship project focuses on surveillance in the borderlands and beyond.

Fran Shea, the former president of E! Entertainment Television, is currently a media consultant with expansive experience in building high performance content companies. A brand creation specialist, Fran is a skilled executive with expertise across media, possessing a broad range of experience in business, product development, content creation at scale and audience building. Fran got her start at HBO as a writer/producer where she won an Emmy for documentary production. She is a founding member of the team that created the cable channel E! Entertainment Television which she programmed for 9 years before becoming president of that channel. She is also credited with the early ideation and development of HBO’s Comedy Channel. As an independent consultant she returned to HBO to found and develop HBOlab which pioneered digital content production in the early days of YouTube and social media. She expanded her consultancy to provide television and digital content, brand and channel development to clients including Hello!/Hola! TV, Viacom channels, Time Warner, and Sony Pictures Television. Fran recently ended a six year contract at Sony where she rebranded and revised the programming and show development at the Game Show Network. She has since returned to independent consulting.

Galen Hooks is a VMA-nominated choreographer, performer, and director who has worked with over 70 artists, from Camila Cabello, Justin Bieber, The Jonas Brothers and Miley Cyrus, to Janet Jackson, Britney Spears, Usher and Rihanna. Her theater work includes Associate Co-Choreographer for the Broadway revival of Dreamgirls. Producing credits include America’s Got Talent  (Associate Consulting Producer), The Voice (Associate Performance  Producer), Disney Channel Presents: Radio Disney’s Family VIP Birthday  (Executive Producer and Creative Director), and YouTube’s “Masterclass“ (Consulting Producer and Host). She has won multiple World Choreography Awards and performs everywhere from The Oscars, The Guggenheim and the Super Bowl, to iconic music videos. Galen now shares invaluable knowledge through her life-changing  intensives, The Galen Hooks Method, which uses dance to transform students of any background and ability.

Garry Pierre-Pierre, a Pulitzer Prize-winning multimedia journalist, is a leading voice on Haiti, the Haitian diaspora and community media. He founded The Haitian Times, which provides quality, nuanced information about Haiti and its diaspora.  He was also a Sulzberger Executive Leadership fellow at Columbia University, where he explored ways to serve the Haitian diaspora worldwide.
A former reporter at The New York Times, where he won a Pulitzer Prize, he is a recognized leader in media entrepreneurship circles. He is the co-founder and first executive director of the Center for Community Media at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism. In 2011, Gary was elected president of the New York Press Association, the first person of color to serve in that role.

Gary’s works include 30 Seconds: The Quake that Destroyed Haiti, a book of photography about Haiti’s 2010 earthquake. His contributions have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, The Miami Herald, Essence, The Griot and The Root among others. He is a fixture on major TV and cable networks, often called upon to provide context and nuance about Haiti.