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.

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.

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.

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.

Cate Adams is the Vice President at Warner Bros. Pictures

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.

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.

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.

Raised in Germany and trained by Haarmann & Riemer (now Symrise), Geza has worked as a perfumer with Diesel, Ormonde Jayne, Baldessarini and Boris Bidjan Saberi. His cutting-edge synthetic ingredients have placed him at the center of some of the 21st century’s most dynamic fragrances, from cult favorites like Boudicca Wode and Paper Passion, to the breathtaking opulence of the beautiful mind series. Geza is the driving force behind the bestselling Escentric Molecules brand, a project that highlights the often ovelooked Iso E Super aroma-molecule known for its velvety and cocooning effect. Geza is known for pushing the boundaries of the fragrance industry and collaborates with artists across the creative spectrum. Working with German artist Wolfgang Georgsdorf he created the Smeller, a piano-like instrument that allows the user to play their own “aromascapes.” Sometimes outrageous, always outspoken, and truly unique, Geza Schön is living proof the future of niche perfume is bright.

After graduating at the Rotterdam Artschool, I took in 1993 my Masters Degree at the National Film and Television School in England. The Nipkow Program in Berlin granted me a fellowship in 2002/03.

With writer Arthur Japin I realized in 2001 my first feature Magonia (Golden Tulip Best Film IFF Istanbul, Circulo Precolombino Best Film in Bogota). My second feature, The Aviatrix of Kazbek (Commersant Press Prize IFF Moscow) closed the 2010 IFF Rotterdam.

Since 2003 I made several documentaries: Poetins Mama and Black Gold under Notecka Forest (Silver Wolf Competition IDFA), Transit Dubai (IDFA, Audience Award IFF Gdansk) and Stand By Your President (IDFA). I’m currently working on a new film in Abkhazia.

Since 2011 I cooperate with radiomaker Jeroen Stout on sound/new media projects. I coach (international) projects of young makers, give workshops and advise funds and organizations. I live and work between The Netherlands and Georgia since 1989.

Joe oversees creative development of digital channels at Conde Nast Entertainment, leading the creation of franchises across the portfolio, as well as being the creator and interviewer of Vogue’s 400 million-view celebrity interview franchise "73 QuestionsJoe started his career as a founder of a digital lab at HBO, where his independent directing and remixing career took off with a viral recap of every season of the Sopranos. In 2010 he gave a TED talk on storytelling, co-hosted Boing Boing TV on Virgin America airlines, sits on the programming board of The Moth, and is co-founder of the YouTube channel “CDZA”, a 300,000-subscriber channel which featured over 150 conservatory musicians in high concept music videos. As a one-man creative shop, he has created ideas and videos for such companies as Google, CFDA Fashion Awards, Interscope Records, BBC America, Comcast, ATT, and others.

Joe is the most ardent American fan of Georgia and unofficial ambassador. He has been to Georgia 16 times since 2006, can read and write kartuli, co-owned Piano (on Tabidze street), and currently co-owns DASTA. He once drove in a crappy car from England to Mongolia, plays classical piano, had a license plate that spelled “RIKROLL”, is an Italian dual citizen and is the 2007 International Pun Champion.

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Jon Lee Anderson, a staff writer, began contributing to The New Yorker in 1998. Since then, he has covered numerous conflicts in the Middle East and Africa, including in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Angola, Somalia, Sudan, Mali, and Liberia. He has also reported frequently from Latin America, writing about Cuba’s migrant exodus, Rio de Janeiro’s gangs, the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, an isolated tribe in Peru’s Amazon, and a Caracas shantytown, among other subjects.

He has written profiles of Augusto Pinochet, Fidel Castro, Hugo Chávez, Nicolás Maduro, Javier Milei, and Gabriel García Márquez. His books include “Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life,” “Guerrillas: Journeys in the Insurgent World,” “The Fall of Baghdad,” and “To Lose a War: The Fall and Rise of the Taliban.”

Jon Lee is a co-author, with Scott Anderson, of two books, “War Zones: Voices from the World’s Killing Grounds” and “Inside the League.” He received a 2026 Overseas Press Club Award for his piece on the abuses of the Assad regime in Syria, and a 2025 George Polk Award for his reporting on the Congo’s 30-year war. In 2013, he was awarded a Maria Moors Cabot Prize for outstanding reporting on Latin America and the Caribbean.

Kerry Hudson was born in Aberdeen. Her first novel, Tony Hogan Bought Me An Ice-Cream Float Before He Stole My Ma, was greeted with wide critical acclaim and won the Scottish First Book Award. Kerry’s second novel, Thirst won the Prix Femina étranger, France’s most prestigious award for foreign fiction. Her new book, Lowborn, is a deeply personal story which will see Hudson return to the towns she grew up in around the UK. In returning to these places, she hopes to uncover long buried truths about her own life but also seeks to illuminate what life is really like for Britain’s poorest today.

Lindsey Hilsum is Channel 4 News' International Editor and the author of “I Brought The War with Me; Stories and Poems from the Front Line.” Recently she has reported on the revolution in Syria, and the wars in Gaza, Lebanon and Ukraine. She has covered the major wars and refugee movements of the past three decades, including Afghanistan, the Sahel, Iraq, Kosovo and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Between  2006-2008 Lindsey was based in China, and in 1994 was the only English-speaking foreign correspondent in Rwanda as the genocide started. She has won many awards, including the Royal Television Society Journalist of the Year, the Charles Wheeler Award and the Royal Geographical Society Patron’s Medal. She  contributes regularly to newspapers and literary magazines. Her book, “In Extremis; the Life of War Correspondent Marie Colvin,” won the 2019 James Tait Black Prize for biography. Her first book was “Sandstorm; Libya in the Time of Revolution.”

Award-winning journalist and established digital executive with a proven track record of anticipating and driving transformational change in several of the world's most influential media and technology companies. My passion is making great media that is meaningful, accessible and delivers positive social impact in our rapidly changing industry environment. Early pioneer in social publishing, including mobile- and video-first content, collaborative open journalism, social media verification and emerging platform partnerships. I believe in strong journalism, transparent leadership, that diverse groups make better decisions, that data is an amazing tool to inform -- but not overwhelm -- a company's mission, and in iterative and goal-oriented strategy.

Margaret Coker is an award-winning investigative American journalist who has spent twenty years reporting in 32 different countries across the former Soviet Union, Middle East, Europe and Africa. She specializes in stories about authoritarian countries in transition, including Russia, Turkey and Libya. She is Disinformation Editor at Coda Story, and is currently writing a book about Iraq’s elite spy unit that successfully infiltrated the Islamic State and helped defeat the terror group.

Mary Walter-Brown is the founder and CEO of the News Revenue Hub, a mission-driven, nonprofit that’s helped independent digital newsrooms raise more than $130 million in volunteer donations. Formerly the publisher at Voice of San Diego, Mary developed the gold standard for nonprofit news membership programs and is a leading voice for community-centered journalism. Working with more than 100 news outlets around the United States, the News Revenue Hub provides donation management software, hands-on consulting, and one of the industry’s most comprehensive sets of benchmarks and best practices.

Matthew Janney is a freelance journalist based in London who writes about literature, culture and the post-Soviet space. His work has also appeared in the Times Literary Supplement, The LA Review of Books and The Calvert Journal.

Shaun Walker is the Guardian's central and eastern Europe correspondent. Previously, Shaun spent more than a decade in Moscow and is the author of The Long Hangover: Putin's New Russia and the Ghosts of the Past. He is a contributor at Coda Story.

Simon Ostrovsky is an award-winning journalist famous for his intrepid reporting in eastern Ukraine, where he was kidnapped, blindfolded and beaten by pro-Russia separatists. He has spent most of his career covering Russia and the former Soviet Union, where he witnessed the rise of Putin and reported on four revolutions. He is now Investigations Editor at Coda Story and a contributor at PBS Newshour.

Suketu Mehta is the New York-based author of ‘Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found,’ which won the Kiriyama Prize and the Hutch Crossword Award, and was a finalist for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize, the Lettre Ulysses Prize, the

BBC4 Samuel Johnson Prize, and the Guardian First Book Award. He has won the Whiting Writers’ Award, the O. Henry Prize, and a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship for his fiction. Mehta’s work has been published in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, National Geographic, Granta, Harper’s Magazine, Time, and Newsweek, and has been featured on NPR’s ‘Fresh Air’ and ‘All Things Considered.’

Mehta is an Associate Professor of Journalism at New York University. His book about global migration, ‘This Land is Their Land’, will be published by Farrar Straus & Giroux in June 2019. He is also working on a nonfiction book about immigrants in contemporary New York, for which he was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship. Mehta has written original screenplays for films, including ‘New York, I Love You’. Mehta was born in Calcutta and raised in Bombay and New York. He is a graduate of New York University and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

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SUZANNE O’SULLIVAN is an Irish neurologist working in Britain. Her first book, Is It All in Your Head?: True Stories of Imaginary Illness, won the 2016 Wellcome Book Prize and the Royal Society of Biology General Book Prize.

Thomas Dworzak is a German photographer. He has produced a number of books and is a member of Magnum Photos. He was President of Magnum from 2017 until 2020. Dworzak won a World Press Photo award in 2001 and in 2018 received the Hood Medal from the Royal Photographic Society in the UK.

CEO, Civil Foundation

Vivian Schiller is a longtime executive at the intersection of journalism, media and technology. She currently heads the Civil Foundation, an independent not-for-profit committed to the sustainability of trustworthy journalism around the world. She is also advisor to Craig Newmark Philanthropies

Prior to joining Civil, Vivian held a number of executive roles in the media industry. She was the Global Chair of News at Twitter. In this role, she led the company’s strategy for news and partnership with journalism organizations and the news publishing ecosystem.

Before that Vivian was Senior VP & Chief Digital Office, NBC News where she led strategy and operations for the networks’ presence on the web, mobile, devices, and social media.

Prior to NBC, Schiller served as President and CEO of NPR, leading all of NPR's worldwide media operations. She was Senior Vice President and General Manager of NYTimes.com and Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Discovery Times Channel, a joint venture of The New York Times and Discovery Communications. Earlier in her career, Schiller was the head of CNN Productions, where she led CNN's long-form programming efforts. Documentaries and series produced under her auspices earned multiple honors, including three Peabody Awards, four Alfred I. DuPont-Columbia University Awards, and dozens of Emmys.

Schiller is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations; and a Director of the Scott Trust, which owns The Guardian.

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Peter Pomerantsev is a widely published author and one of the most important global thinkers when it comes to the war in Ukraine and its global implications. Peter is currently a Research Fellow at the Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University, but you will have seen his name on pages of the Financial Times, Time magazine, and the Atlantic to name just a few.

Earlier this year, he won the European Press Prize for his extraordinary essay on the importance of new, connected global narratives. Peter is an influential voice among Western policymakers. He has testified on the challenges of information war to the US House Foreign Affairs Committee, US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and the UK Parliament Defense Select Committee. His book on Russian propaganda, Nothing is True and Everything is Possible, won the 2016 Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize, was nominated for the Samuel Johnson, Guardian First Book, Pushkin House, and Gordon Burns Prizes. It is translated into over a dozen languages. His latest book is This Is Not Propaganda: Adventures in the War Against Reality.