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 with the aim of promoting affordable, equitable education. Students at Outlier receive transcripted transferable credits from the University of Pittsburgh. Outlier recently launched associate degrees with Golden Gate University that cost less than the average Pell Grant award enabling students to receive an education at zero cost to them. At MasterClass, Rasmussen was both Creative Director and CTO, creating courses taught by notable experts. The video game he co-wrote, BlindSide, has won multiple awards and is being adapted into a film.

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 Pincus is an award-winning creative executive with a background that includes scripted and nonfiction television, narrative and documentary film, audio and digital content. He has been an independent producer, a network executive and head of an independent studio. Along the way he’s been awarded a Peabody, an Emmy, a Webby, a BDA Gold for broadcast design, and the Cannes Lion; his projects have been nominated for Gotham, Independent Spirit, and Academy Awards. In 2019, Pincus founded Best Case Studios, a producer of narrative audio series, film and TV, which has included two innovative “podcast movies” for C13Features. Prior to Best Case, Pincus helped found Topic Studios, where he was Executive Vice President, Programming & Content. He is an Adjunct Professor at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, and in the Entertainment, Media and Technology Program at NYU’s Leonard H. Stern School of Business. He has been a writer for numerous film publications and Contributing Editor for FILMMAKER Magazine.

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.

Alexandre is a machine-learning researcher and engineer at Open Evidence, a Tbilisi-based startup building automated tools for media and information landscape analysis. He is a graduate of the AI program at Northeastern University with an interest in hybrid warfare and tech for civil society, currently focusing on media bias extraction and quantifying the info-sphere.

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).

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.

Andrew North is a journalist and writer who has reported on conflicts across the world, and the author of a new book on Afghanistan’s wars called War and Peace and War. He began his career covering upheavals in Iran and Pakistan for British newspapers and magazines, before later joining the BBC. During a 20-year career with the broadcaster, he served as a television and radio correspondent in Afghanistan, Iraq, the United States and India, and was sent to cover breaking news in many other places around the globe. He first reported from Afghanistan in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks and the US invasion, and then covered the Taliban’s return to power 20 years later. He covered the 2008 Russian invasion of Georgia, and has also reported on wars in Libya, Syria, Lebanon, Sri Lanka and Kosovo. Andrew contributes to several podcasts and his writing has been published by a wide range of international publications, sometimes illustrated with his own drawings. His artistic reportage, focusing on the people and stories of a famous old market in Georgia, was recognized with a Webby nomination.

Anna Reismann is the Country Director for Uganda and South Sudan at Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung. Anna has been actively involved in European and International Cooperation for more than a decade. From 2008 to 2010 she was working as a Deputy Country Director of the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung in Ukraine before managing a Brussels-based project of the European Network of Political Foundations (ENoP) on the EU enlargement towards the Western Balkan countries. Since 2012 she has served as Policy Advisor Andean Countries, Central America and Mexico at the headquarters of the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung in Berlin, Germany. She spent two years (2016-2017) with her family in Rwanda.Anna holds a Diploma Degree in Languages, Economics and Cultural Studies from the University of Passau. She speaks German, Russian, English, Spanish and Ukrainian.

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.

Armando Iannucci’s screenplay for the film 'In The Loop' was nominated for an Oscar at the Academy Awards. His iconic series for the BBC 'The Thick of It'  was nominated for 13 BAFTA Awards, winning five during its four series run. Among his own award-winning shows, he is also the co-creator and writer of the popular Steve Coogan character Alan Partridge. Armando's HBO comedy 'Veep' has picked up numerous awards, including four Emmys for Outstanding Comedy Series over the last four years. His film adaptation of Charles Dickens' 'The Personal History of David Copperfield' was released in January 2020, which has won numerous awards including Best Screenplay at the WGBA and Best Screenplay at BIFA, was also nominated for a Golden Globe, and won a 'Seal Distinction' from the US Critics' Choice Association. In 2017, he published 'Hear Me Out', a new book on classical music, and released the feature film 'The Death of Stalin', which was nominated for two BAFTAs and won Best Comedy at the European Film Awards. His latest HBO series, 'Avenue 5', which starred Hugh Laurie and Josh Gad, ran for two series on SKY 2020 and 2022. Armando is currently working on a new comedy for HBO entitled ‘The Franchise’ with Sam Mendes, and will be making his debut as a playwright with ‘Pandemonium’ at London’s Soho Theatre, followed by the highly anticipated stage adaption of Stanley Kubrick’s ‘Dr Strangelove’ which sees Armando reuniting with Steve Coogan in the titular role. The play will open in London’s West End in fall 2024.

Bao Nguyen is an Emmy-nominated Vietnamese-American filmmaker whose work has appeared on HBO, Netflix, the New York Times, and ESPN among many others. He directed Be Water, a deep dive into the life and journey of Bruce Lee, which competed in the U.S. Documentary Competition category at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival and was broadcast nationally on ESPN, becoming the most watched ESPN 30 for 30 film ever. His latest film, The Greatest Night in Pop, a feature documentary about the making of the seminal global hit song, "We Are the World", world premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival and launched globally on Netflix. In addition to his directing work, he is a partner at EAST Films, a production company based in Vietnam looking to elevate Vietnamese cinema domestically and abroad.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Claudia Milne is senior vice president, Standards and Practices for CBS News and Stations, where she oversees all CBS News editorial standards and ensures they are being maintained across all CBS News, stations and digital platforms.

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.

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.

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.

Eliza Anyangwe is Managing Editor of CNN’s multi-award-winning gender inequality reporting team As Equals, and 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. Before joining CNN in February 2021, she was Managing Editor of The Correspondent, a platform for constructive, member-funded, ad-free journalism. Eliza has spoken about gender, journalism or international development on stages from SXSW to TED Global; has written for The Guardian, Al Jazeera and the FT; and has appeared on Newsnight, BBC World Service, PRI’s The World and Our Body Politic, among others. She is a contributing author to Africa’s Media Image in the 21st Century, published by Routledge.

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.

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.

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.

Gary Shteyngart is The New York Times bestselling author of the memoir Little Failure and the novels Super Sad True Love Story, Lake Success, Absurdistan, and The Russian Debutante’s Handbook. For his books, he has been a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist, winner of the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize, winner of the Stephen Crane Award for First Fiction and the National Jewish Book Award for Fiction. His books regularly appear on best-of lists around the world and have been published in 30 countries. His latest novel, Our Country Friends, was a New York Times bestseller and was named one of the best books of the year by the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Time magazine, Kirkus Review, and others.

Genia Mineeva is the founder of BEEN London, a multi-award winning sustainable accessories brand with a mission to change the way we view waste. Named “one of the most innovative fashion businesses in the world” by British Vogue, the company makes all its products in London entirely from materials that would otherwise end up in a landfill. Having collaborated with global businesses such as DHL and Netflix, BEEN London has already rescued several tonnes of waste from going into landfill. A true disruptor, BEEN London manages to create products with an average carbon footprint 87% lower than anything on the high street.

Italian-Dutch journalist Gian Paolo Accardo is the cofounder and editor-in-chief of the European independent and multilingual news website Voxeurop. He also contributes to Internazionale. He was previously deputy news editor of Courrier international and correspondent for the press agency TMNews, as well as for several Italian and French news outlets. He lives between Brussels and Paris.

Born in Tbilisi, Georgia in 2000, Giorgi studied the piano without ever thinking about a professional career as a pianist. He is passionate about the folksongs of his country, which he likes to arrange and sing. He even participated in the Georgian version of ‘The Voice’ and won the competition at the age of 13. He continued his musical training at the Paliashvili Central Music School for Gifted Children and entered the Tbilisi State Conservatory, in the class of Revaz Tavadze. Giorgi’s pianistic career took a decisive turn in April 2019 when he won First Prize at the Vigo International Piano Competition. A few months later, Giorgi won Third Prize and the Audience Prize at the Sixty-Second Busoni Competition. In 2021, he received the Hortense Anda- Bührle Special Prize at the Fifteenth Géza Anda Piano Competition in Zurich, which was followed by an invitation to take part in the KlavierOlymp in Bad Kissingen, where he won First Prize and the Audience Prize. In March 2023, Giorgi celebrated another great success. He won the 2nd Prize at the Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Master Competition and was also awarded the Junior Jury Prize, the Prize for the best chamber music and 5 out of 6 audience prizes. Since September 2021, Giorgi has been studying with Nelson Goerner in Geneva. He is supported by the Lisa Batiashvili Foundation and the Géza Anda-Foundation. In the 2022/23 season he is a Classeek Ambassador artist. He is supported by Bayer Kultur’s stARTacademy. Alongside his career as a classical pianist, he has created with his friends an electronic and experimental music group, Tsduneba, which means ‘temptation’ in Georgian.

Giorgi Kandelaki was a member of the Georgian Parliament from 2008 to 2020. He is now a project manager at the Soviet Past Research Laboratory (Sovlab), a leading Georgian think tank focused on researching Georgia's Soviet totalitarian past and countering its weaponization by Russian disinformation. Most recently Giorgi edited Georgia vs Joseph Stalin, a collaborative popular history book published jointly by Sovlab and Lasha Bugadze, one of Georgia’s most acclaimed writers.

Giorgi Lomsadze is a journalist and storyteller from Georgia. He has covered Georgia and former Soviet Union for 20 years. One of the most prominent voices from the Caucasus, Giorgi makes it his job to explain this complex region to the rest of the world.

Giorgi Miminoshvili was born in Rustavi, Georgia, and is now based in Tbilisi. He is currently studying visual art at the Free University of Tbilisi, within the VAADS (Visual Arts, Architecture & Design School) program.

Hans Gutbrod writes on the Caucasus, ethics, and commemoration, and works as a consultant in policy research. Together with colleagues, Hans led a high-impact campaign to increase the transparency of research funding, Transparify. He previously was the regional director of the Caucasus Research Resource Centers (CRRC). Hans has been working in the Caucasus region since 1999 and currently is a professor at Ilia State University. His recent book "Ethics of Political Commemoration: Towards a New Paradigm" (with David Wood, 2023) proposes that the just war tradition can help to order public debates on remembrance.

Inga Thordar is the Chief External Relations Officer for the Ocean Born Foundation where she works across all business lines. The foundation tackles climate change by funding initiatives that restore and protect the ocean. Inga is passionate about environmental and social impact and justice and is also a non-executive director for several mission driven companies and charities. She is the former Executive Editor of CNN Digital Worldwide, overseeing all international news, sport and programming teams globally. In her role, she pushed for more and better coverage of the climate crisis and hired the first international climate editor. She is the co-founder of the innovative gender reporting series As Equals. Before CNN, she was a Senior Editor at the BBC bringing together TV and digital production teams and commissioning. Prior to that she was the Front Page Editor for the BBC News website responsible for quality control of all content, daily publication and team management.

Irakli Vetsko currently works as a director of Children’s Hospice “Firefly World”. He is an international development professional and successful small business owner with over 25 years personal and professional experience in the Caucasus, Cambodia, Dominican Republic and Tanzania across a core group of technical areas: compliance, finance/administration, organizational development, conflict mitigation and peacebuilding, education and youth.

Irena Popiashvili is a curator and writer. She is currently the Dean and founder of Visual Arts, Architecture & Design School, VA[A}DS, at the Free University of Tbilisi. She is also a founder of contemporary art space Kunsthalle Tbilisi. Previously, she co-owned the Newman Popiashvili Gallery in New York (2005-2012) and served as a director of the State Academy of Arts in Tbilisi in 2012. Popiashvili has curated exhibitions in the US and Europe, including the Georgian Pavilion in the Venice Biennale in 1999 and 2003. Her writing has appeared in Art Forum and Vienna Contemporary among other leading publications. She received a BA from Tbilisi State University and University of Lodz, Poland and an MA in art history from University of Georgia in Athens, GA (USA).

Isobel Cockerell is a senior reporter with Coda Story. She joined Coda in 2018 after graduating from Columbia Journalism School. She writes about historical reckonings, dystopia, surveillance, conspiracies and climate. She was nominated for the 2023 Orwell prize and was the winner of the 2020 European Press Prize.

Jake Friedman is a manager and producer who has contributed to numerous #1 albums, sold-out tours, and critically acclaimed works in music, theater, and film. He launched his own record label at the age of 19 and led We Are Free Management for a decade. In 2019, he co-founded Crush Works, where he manages artists across multiple disciplines while producing notable works like 'Derek DelGaudio's In & Of Itself' for Disney+ and 'Neal Brennan: Blocks' on Netflix.

Joe Sabia is a filmmaker and digital artist with an intuitive talent for conceiving viral concepts and formats. Joe is the creator and interviewing voice of Vogue’s iconic “73 Questions” series featuring 90 of the world's biggest A-list celebrities like Taylor Swift, Adele, Roger Federer, Bad Bunny and Jennifer Lawrence. He is also the interviewer of the annual “Billie Eilish, One Year Later” series for Vanity Fair. Joe directed his first feature film “FEDERER: 12 FINAL DAYS” for Amazon Studios on the retirement of Roger Federer from tennis, alongside director Asif Kapadia. He currently acts as a creative director for TEAM8 Studios, leading the development and execution of content for Roger Federer, Coco Gauff and Ben Shelton. Before Studio Sabia, Joe was the SVP of Creative Development at Condé Nast Entertainment, leading the creation of digital franchises like Wired's “Autocomplete Interviews”, Vanity Fair’s “Lie Detector Interviews”, Glamour’s “You Sang My Song”, GQ’s “Actually Me”. Joe is an advisor to Masterclass, The Moth, Outlier.org and Tonebase Piano. He runs his own creative strategy agency/production company called Studio Sabia, with clients like Audible, Youtube, Spotify, American Express, Netflix, Facebook, Instagram, Carnegie Hall, and UNICEF. Joe is a lifelong classical piano lover and amateur pianist and considers himself the unofficial cultural ambassador to the country of Georgia.

Johnny Harris is an Emmy-winning independent journalist and contributor to the New York Times. Based in Washington, DC, Harris reports on interesting trends and stories domestically and around the globe, publishing to his audience of over 5 million on Youtube. Harris produced and hosted the twice Emmy-nominated series Borders for Vox Media. His visual style blends motion graphics with cinematic videography to create content that explains complex issues in relatable ways.

Jon Lee Anderson is an internationally recognised journalist, author, and war correspondent. He began his reporting career in the early 1980s, chronicling Central America’s civil wars for TIME magazine and other journals. As a New Yorker staff writer since 1998, he has covered numerous international conflicts, including those in Syria, Ukraine, Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Somalia, Sudan, Angola, Mali, Liberia, and Central African Republic. Anderson’s work has also appeared in The New York Times, Harper’s, El Pais, Internazionale, The Financial Times, and other publications. Jon Lee has also written about well-known contemporary figures, such as Gabriel García Márquez, Hugo Chávez, Fidel Castro, Augusto Pinochet, Spain’s King Juan Carlos, and Saddam Hussein. He is the author of Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life, Guerrillas: Journeys in the Insurgent World, The Fall of Baghdad, and several other books. He has won a number of awards and distinctions, including several from the Overseas Press Club, as well as the Maria Moors Cabot Gold Medal for his reporting on Latin America. Jon Lee is on a number of journalism award juries, including the Swiss-based True Story Award, the Michael Jacobs Travel Writing Fund, and as a member of the board of directors of the Fundación Gabo (formerly New Journalism Foundation), founded by Gabriel García Márquez, he helps choose winners for the annual Premios Gabo. Once a year, he gives workshops to young Latin American reporters.

Jonathan Beckman is the editor of 1843 magazine, The Economist's home for narrative journalism, publishing profiles, reportage and investigations from across the world. This year 1843 was a finalist in the General Excellence at America's National Magazine Awards. He is also the author of an acclaimed work of narrative history, How to Ruin a Queen: Marie Antoinette, the Stolen Diamonds and the Scandal that Shook the French Throne, which won the Somerset Maugham Award and the Royal Society of Literature/Jerwood Prize

Julia Ioffe is a founding partner and the Washington correspondent for Puck, a new media company, where she covers foreign policy and national security. Julia is a specialist in Russia and Russian-American relations, and her work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, The New Republic, Washington Post, Forbes, Politico, Foreign Policy, and The New Yorker, where she was a Moscow-based correspondent from 2009-2012. Her book, Motherland: A Feminist History of Modern Russia,from Revolution to Autocracy, will be published in March.

Julia Watson is a food writer and has contributed to publications including The Observer, The Sunday Times, the Mail on Sunday, the Washington Post, Gourmet, The National Interest and other outlets. She has also broadcast on NPR. For almost a decade she was the Food Writer for international news agency United Press International and ran her own food web site, eatWashington.com. She twice won Gourmand International’s award for World’s Best French Cookbook. Bruno's Cookbook has just been published by Knopf in the US and by Quercus in the UK.

Julie Posetti is the Global Director of Research at the International Center for Journalists. She previously was a Senior Research Fellow at the RISJ and led the Journalism Innovation Project at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. She researches at the intersection of journalism, digital media, and freedom of expression. Posetti is the author of Protecting Journalism Sources in the Digital Age (UNESCO 2017) and the co-editor of Journalism, ‘Fake News’ and Disinformation (UNESCO 2018). She was awarded her PhD in December 2018, and her academic research has been published internationally in peer reviewed journals and scholarly books. Dr Posetti brings over two decades of high-level international journalism practice to her research, including time as a news editor, documentary reporter and national political correspondent with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). She has been awarded the Australian Human Rights Awards for Radio, and the Australian National Press Club’s ‘German Award for Journalism’. More recently, her work has been published by The Atlantic, Harvard University’s Nieman Lab, the BBC, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Guardian.

Justyna Mielnikiewicz is an award winning photographer from Poland, based in Tbilisi, Georgia for over a decade. She worked with numerous international publications, including Newsweek, Le Monde, Stern, The New York Times, National Geographic and most recently the Wall Street Journal. She is a winner of World Press Photo, Aftermath Project Grant, Eugene Smith Memorial Fund in 2016, Canon Female Photojournalist Prize and Caucasus Young Photographer Award by Magnum Foundation. In 2022, for her work in Ukraine for the Wall Street Journal, she was awarded The Olivier Rebbot Award by the Overseas Press Club of America for best photographic news reporting from abroad published in any medium.

Killian Poolmans is dedicated to changing the way organisations and teams practice innovation. As a Designer and founder of PINKHAMMER, he helps teams increase the positive impact of their products. Through engaging workshops, Killian equips teams with the skills to cultivate creative and inclusive innovation processes. Killian has updated the innovation processes of over 500 teams, spanning the spectrum from startups to global organisations in cities such as Amsterdam, Berlin, Melbourne, Singapore, Seoul and currently Tbilisi. Combining his background in Industrial Design Engineering with his knowledge of Queer Theory, Killian tries to look at innovation and design processes through a queer lens. Using the combination of these two fields, Killian's overarching mission is to champion a workforce that crafts visionary products and services designed to cater to the diverse needs of society at large.

Kira Brunner Don is the Editor-in-Chief and co-founder of Stranger’s Guide, a travel publication that explores the power of place-based journalism. She has worked as a magazine editor in New York for 17 years and as a journalist in Eastern Europe and the Balkans. She has received two National Magazine Awards for General Excellence in her role as Editor-in-Chief of Stranger’s Guide and one National Magazine Award in Photography for her photo curation. In 2022, she was named the FOLIO: Eddie and Ozzie Award’s Editor of the Year. She is co-editor of the book The New Killing Fields: Massacre and the Politics of Intervention and was the co-founder of the Oakland Book Festival.

Levan Ghambashidze is a graudate of the Faculty of Philosophy and Social Sciences at Ilia Chavchavadze Tbilisi State University of Language and Culture. In 2007, he participated in the Erasmus Mundus master's program, embarking on a two-year educational journey across three universities: Luxembourg, Prague, and Bochum. Upon completion, he was awarded a master's degree. From 2009 onwards, he has pursued further studies at Ilia State University, Tbilisi Art Academy, and Conservatory, while actively engaging in public activities. Notably, since 2016, he has been enrolled at the Guivy Zaldastanishvili American Academy of History and Philosophy.

Liz Gibbons is Executive Editor of the BBC World Service’s Long Form and Investigations Department which produces a range of documentaries and podcasts including Africa Eye and BBC Eye, and also produces short form digital investigations. Liz is a former Deputy Editor of BBC Newsnight and previously ran the BBC’s World News TV channel.

Logan Williams is a senior data scientist, researcher, and software developer on Bellingcat's Investigative Technology Team. At Bellingcat he has built open source tools for geolocating and archiving conflict imagery, collaborated with Bellingcat's volunteer community to investigate oil spills in the Caribbean, and taught workshops on open source investigation with Python.

Maria Ressa is the co-founder Rappler, the top digital-only news site that is leading the fight for press freedom in the Philippines. As Rappler's CEO and president, Maria has endured constant political harassment and arrests by the Duterte government, forced to post bail ten times to stay free. Rappler's battle for truth and democracy is the subject of the 2020 Sundance Film Festival documentary, A Thousand Cuts. In October 2021, Maria was one of two journalists awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of her "efforts to safeguard freedom of expression, which is a precondition for democracy and lasting peace." For her courage and work on disinformation and 'fake news,' Maria was named one of Time Magazine’s 2018 Person of the Year, was among its 100 Most Influential People of 2019, and has also been named one of Time's Most Influential Women of the Century. She was also part of the BBC's 100 most inspiring and influential women of 2019 and Prospect magazine's world's top 50 thinkers. In 2020, she received the Journalist of the Year award, the John Aubuchon Press Freedom Award, the Most Resilient Journalist Award, the Tucholsky Prize, the Truth to Power Award, and the Four Freedoms Award. In 2021, UNESCO awarded her the Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize. Among many awards for her principled stance, she received the prestigious Golden Pen of Freedom Award from the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers, the Knight International Journalism Award from the International Center for Journalists, the Gwen Ifill Press Freedom Award from the Committee to Protect Journalists, the Shorenstein Journalism Award from Stanford University, the Columbia Journalism Award, the Free Media Pioneer Award from the International Press Institute, and the Sergei Magnitsky Award for Investigative Journalism. Maria wrote Seeds of Terror: An Eyewitness Account of al-Qaeda’s Newest Center of Operations in Southeast Asia and From Bin Laden to Facebook: 10 Days of Abduction, 10 Years of Terrorism. She is writing her third book, How to Stand up to a Dictator, for publication in 2022.

Mariam Nikuradze is a co-founder and executive director at OC Media. She's a photojournalist and reporter, who has been covering ongoing events in Georgia since 2009.

Mariana Sych is a correspondent for RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service. She has worked on the documentary project "Ty iak?" ("How are you?) about Ukrainian refugees and deportations, and is the co-author of the documentary “List 31”, about identifying a group of 31 children deported from Mariupol and naming the Russian officials and Kremlin occupation proxies responsible. Law enforcement agencies investigating these crimes drew on the material from this investigation in criminal proceedings. The heroes in the story became key witnesses in the ICC deportation case following publication. Before working at RFE/RL, Mariana was an investigative journalist.

Marisa Mazria Katz is a journalist and radio reporter whose work has been featured in The New York Times, Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, Vogue, NPR, and more. In 2009, she initiated a journalism program for teens in Casablanca, Morocco, funded by the US State Department. Katz served as the founding editor of Creative Time Reports, a media site from public art nonprofit Creative Time that highlighted artists' perspectives on current issues, and collaborated with major news organizations like The Guardian and The Intercept. In 2018, she launched the Eyebeam Center for the Future of Journalism with support from Craig Newmark Philanthropies. Recently, Marisa co-founded the Center for Artistic Inquiry and Reporting, fostering journalist-artist collaborations. She teaches at the Rhode Island School of Design.

Masho Lomashvili is a freelance journalist and producer based in Tbilisi, Georgia. She covers a range of topics, including disinformation, global conflicts, and the use of new technologies by authoritarian regimes. After spending two years as a researcher at the multi-media outlet Coda Story, she now works with international media organizations including CNN, ITV, and The Guardian.

Matthew Janney is a British-Georgian writer based in London and a former editor at TANK magazine. He writes about literature, culture and the Caucasus and his work has appeared in the Guardian, the Financial Times, the New Statesman, Coda Story, the Times Literary Supplement, and others. Before writing, Matthew played international rugby for Georgia.

Matthew Pye has been a teacher for over 20 years, first in the UK, then Germany and now for 14 years in Brussels. For over a decade, he has worked with leading scientists in sustainability, with a focus on climate change. Most notably, in 2011 in collaboration with Michael Wadleigh, Oscar winning director of ‘Woodstock’ (1970) and Birgit van Munster, he established the Climate Academy. This innovative work to hothouse small groups of students in the science and social realities of climate change was recognized by the offer of Full Membership to the Club of Rome (EU Chapter) in 2016. He has given numerous lectures on Climate Change and systems thinking, at the European Commission, Cambridge University, VU (Amsterdam), St Louis University (Brussels) and most recently in Kazakhstan; alongside talks and workshops in different schools in Europe. He co-authored the recent and widely applauded Philosophy syllabus (2019) for the European School system. His latest book, "Plato Tackles Climate Change" (2020) has recently been followed up with "Arendt Tackles Climate Change" (2024).

Molly Crabapple is an artist and writer. She is the co-author of Brothers of the Gun, an illustrated collaboration with Syrian war journalist Marwan Hisham, which was a New York Times Notable Book and long-listed for the 2018 National Book Award. Her memoir, Drawing Blood, received global praise and attention. Her animated films have been nominated for three Emmys and won an Edward R. Murrow Award. Molly’s reportage has been published in the New York Times, New York Review of Books, The Paris Review, Vanity Fair, The Guardian, The New Yorker and Rolling Stone. She was the 2019 artist-in-residence at NYU’s Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies in 2019, a New America fellow in 2020, and the winner of the Bernhardt Labor Journalism Award in 2022. Currently, she is a fellow at the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library, working on a history of the Jewish Labor Bund.

Monique Maddy is a multicultural entrepreneur, author, and innovator devoted to improving the everyday lives of people across Africa. In her 30-year career, she has held senior positions at Google and Apple and launched her own entrepreneurial ventures to amplify African voices and influence on the global stage. At Apple, she successfully developed and executed the company’s Apple Pay strategy in Latin America and subsequently its payments strategy for Apple media products (App Store, Apple Music, Apple TV, iCloud) in Latin America and Africa. She also founded a disruptive digital wallet platform that was incubated by Google and rolled out in Mexico, and she brought mobile cellular service to Africa. Through Unite in Africa and Out of Omo, Monique is partnering with industry leaders inside and outside Africa to identify, invest in, and promote the countless business opportunities in the media and fintech sectors. She is also the published author of Learning to Love Africa: My Journey from Africa to Harvard Business School and Back (HarperCollins, 2004), drawing on her personal experiences in Africa and her MBA at Harvard Business School. Her articles have been published in TechCrunch and Harvard Business Review.

Nabeelah Shabbir is a British-Pakistani freelance journalist, based in Amsterdam. As Senior Research Associate at the Washington DC-based International Center for Journalists (ICFJ), Nabeelah collaborates with a small team of women investigating topics such as: disinformation in newsrooms around the world; journalism after the pandemic; and online violence against women journalists. She is co-author of a series of reports at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford about digital-born news media; innovation in news media in the Global South; and the impact of the Panama Papers investigation, three years on. At The Guardian, Nabeelah shared a British Journalism Award with the “Keep it in the Ground” team, which focused its reporting on fossil fuel divestment and climate change, in 2015. She was also a “European Young Journalist” of the year for her writing in Kosovo in 2008.

Nadia is a writer and pianist. She is a regular contributor to the Financial Times and her articles, essays, and criticism also appear in publications including The New Yorker, National Geographic, the Guardian, and the Times Literary Supplement among several others. She was editor-in-chief of The Calvert Journal, an award-winning magazine covering contemporary art, culture and society in Russia, Eastern Europe, Central Asia and the Caucasus. Prior to that, she was Moscow correspondent for The Independent. Her first book, a memoir on music, life and the art of amateurism, will be out in 2025/26 by WW Norton and Faber & Faber.

Natalia Antelava is a co-founder of ZEG Fest and co-founder and editor-in-chief of Coda Story, an award-winning newsroom that covers the roots of global crises. Originally from Tbilisi, Natalia has been a BBC correspondent in the Caucasus, Central Asia, Middle East, Washington DC and India. She has covered the Russian invasion of Georgia in 2008, the wars in Iraq and in Eastern Ukraine and reported undercover from Burma, Yemen and Uzbekistan. Her investigations into human rights abuses in Central Asia, Iraq and the United States have won her a number of awards. In addition to a career in broadcast journalism, she has written for the Guardian, Forbes magazine and the New Yorker. She is currently John S. Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford University.

Nataliya Gumenyuk is a Ukrainian journalist and author specializing in conflict reporting. She is the founder and CEO of the Public Interest Journalism Lab which promotes constructive discussion around complex social issues. After the full-scale Russian invasion, PIJL co-founded "The Reckoning Project: Ukraine Testifies" which documents war crimes committed during the war. The Reckoning Project’s documentaries and articles have been published by TIME, Vanity Fair, The Atlantic, and The New York Times. In 2023, under Gumenyuk's leadership within the “Connecting The Continents” initiative, PIJL brought to Ukraine senior editors, public intellectuals and journalists from South America, Africa, and Asia. Nataliya is the author of several documentaries and books, including The Lost Island: Tales From The Occupied Crimea and The Maidan Tahrir, on the development after the Arab Spring, as well as co-author of the book The Scariest Days of My Life. The dispatches of the Reckoning Project. As a foreign news correspondent, she has reported from over 50 countries. Nataliya regularly writes for Vanity Fair, The Washington Post, The Rolling Stone, The Guardian, Foreign Affairs, The Atlantic, The New York Times. Gumenyuk was the co-founder and head of Independent Ukrainian Hromadske TV and Hromadske International and is currently a Board member. She is the recipient of the 2022 NED Democracy Award, 2022 Media Freedom Award, as well 2023 Hanns Joachim Friedrichs Prize.

Born in 1975, Natasha Lomouri was schooled in Georgia and in the US and started her university studies at the faculty of International Law and International Relations in Tbilisi State University and continued at the University of Bologna, Faculty of Political Science. She was awarded with a PhD in 2004 after defending her dissertation entitled Arab-Israeli Conflict: Peace Process at the end of XX Century at the Tbilisi State University. In 2011-2023, she was the director of Writers’ House of Georgia. She is the curator and concept author of the Museum of Repressed Soviet Writers. Since November 2023, Natasha has been the executive director of PEN Georgia.

Nikoloz Rachveli is the Music Director and Principal Conductor of the Georgian Philharmonic Orchestra. He is a laureate of the Rustaveli Prize and a Goodwill Ambassador for UNICEF Georgia. Rachveli's expertise spans composing, conducting, and solo piano performances, adding a unique flair to his concerts. Rachveli's musical education began under the guidance of Lili Gabunia and Mikheil Shughliashvili. He graduated from the Tbilisi State Conservatoire in 2005, studying under Bidzina Kvernadze. Between 1999 and 2003, he attended the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna, where he participated in master classes with notable composers such as Pierre Boulez, Luciano Berio, and Michael Jarrell. Among Rachveli's notable works are his Piano Concerto "Introversion," which premiered at Carnegie Hall and Berlin Konzerthaus, and his symphonic piece "The Answer," performed in Tbilisi and Petersburg. His vocal-instrumental piece "The Rest is Silence" premiered at Teatro alla Scala in 2016, and "The Silver Sun" had its world premiere at Hamburg ElbPhilharmonie in 2018. As an innovator, Rachveli founded the Contemporary Music Festival KONTRAPUNKT, which promotes the meeting of Georgian and foreign composers' works. He has also played a crucial role in reforming the Georgian Philharmonic Orchestra, allowing musicians to elect their Creative Directors, a first in Georgia's history. Under his leadership, the orchestra has performed at prestigious venues worldwide, including Berlin Konzerthaus, Paris Les Invalides, and Hamburg ElbPhilharmonie.

Nino Japiashvili is the Managing Editor of the Georgian Bureau of the Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL). She has more than 25 years of experience working as a journalist, editor and producer at independent online and television outlets.  She has anchored and later produced several programs on independent Rustavi 2 Television, before that she was working at the Georgian Public  Broadcaster, prior to moving to print and online media as the editor-in-chief of the “Tskheli Shokoladi” Magazine, and, later, as the executive editor of the Liberali Magazine. In 2015, Japiashvili co-founded Indigo, an award-winning publication, and a web platform.  Nino Japiashvili is a trainer and lecturer of media ethics and multimedia reporting. She is on faculty at the Georgian Institute of Public Affairs, Caucasus School of Journalism and Media Management. She has been elected to serve as a board member of the Charter of Journalistic Ethics of Georgia in 2020 and 2015.

Nino Nanitashvili is a technology evangelist with more than 12 years of management and consulting experience in the tech & startup industry. Currentl,y she supports Google for Startups Accelerator programs across Europe and Israel. Nino has worked with private, non-profit, and government institutions and has consulted with international organizations including the World Bank, United States Agency for International Development, Asian Development Bank, the United Nations Development Program, Grameen Creative Lab and Google. Furthermore, Nino serves as a mentor, youth educator, and advocate for women and girls in both the Georgian and global tech ecosystems. She is one of the creators of the Grace Hopper Award that celebrates and encourages diversity in the ICT industry. Nino's academic background lies in entrepreneurship, social sciences and public policy, including her MSc in Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship from the London School of Economics and Political Science. Nino's work has been recognised by and showcased via Forbes 30 Under 30, TEdx, One Young World, Emerging Young Leaders Award, Women in Computing Social Impact Award and more.

Nishant is the Chief Executive Officer of the International Fund for Public Interest Media. He co-founded the Fund and led its launch in 2023 with a multilateral coalition of 16 donors that include some of the world’s largest governments, corporates and philanthropies. He oversees a global team, with staff in Latin America, North America, Europe, Africa and Asia. Nishant has 20 years of experience in international development, media development and strategy roles. Prior to joining the International Fund, he was Vice President of Global Programmes at Luminate, where he was also a long serving member of the leadership team. In 2013, Nishant helped launch the non-profit Global Innovation Fund (GIF). As COO, he led GIF’s investment process and venture support team, making investments and grants across the world. Prior to that, Nishant was on the founding team of MonitorInclusive Markets (MIM) in India, which sought to scale up social enterprises addressing economic inequality. Early in his career he worked at the UN Development Programme inZambia and also at Marakon Associates, a strategy consulting firm in London. Nishant has an MBA from Harvard Business School, where he was a Fulbright Scholar. He also has a Master's in Aeronautical Engineering and a B.A. in General Engineering from Cambridge University.

Nishita Jha is a journalist, illustrator and graphic designer. She worked as BuzzFeed News' Global Women's Rights Reporter, where she covered the intersection of gender with technology, labour rights and politics. She wrote and narrated India's first true crime podcast, Trial by Error, produced by Jamun Studio and Arré. She also co-produced Rebel Music, a documentary series on sexual violence and resistance in India for Mtv World. She is currently obsessed with the potential and terrors of AI, and makes an illustrated newsletter called Now and Zen about finding stillness in a chaotic world.

Oliver Müser is a political scientist from Germany who works at the nexus of civil society and media in Eastern Europe, the South Caucasus and Central Asia.

Born and brought up in Venezuela, Patrick Walsh studied law at Cambridge before becoming a literary agent. Having co-founded Conville & Walsh in 2000, he then sold the agency to Curtis Brown before founding PEW Literary in 2016. His clients have won or shortlisted for numerous literary awards.

Pavel Butorin is the director of the Current Time TV & Digital Network, based in Prague, Czechia. Current Time is a 24/7 television and digital media resource for Russian speakers worldwide, led by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in cooperation with the Voice of America. Known in Russian as Настоящее Время, Current Time offers an alternative to Kremlin-controlled media. The network counters misinformation by providing live news, robust debate, and fact-based, unbiased reporting on local, regional, and international issues. In addition to unfiltered news, Current Time is the largest provider of independent Russian-language documentaries and one of the few media organizations that continue to provide Russian speakers with uncensored information about the Kremlin’s war on Ukraine.

Pekka Kallioniemi (PhD) is a Finnish expert on social media and disinformation. He works as an independent consultant and as postdoctoral researcher on human-technology interaction at Tampere University. Besides researching state-of-the-art technologies, he's also studied Russian online information operations and disinformation. In his current work, he combines these topics, studying how online information operations and disinformation may change in the future with the adoption of technologies such as ChatGPT, deep fakes, and generative AI. Kallioniemi has been publishing the popular "vatnik soup" series on Twitter since October 2022 and has been a regular commentator on national and international media. Since January 2023, he’s worked as a columnist for the British newspaper Byline Times, and his work has been covered in Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and Die Welt.

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.

Polina Ivanova is a foreign correspondent for the Financial Times covering Russia, Ukraine, the Caucasus and Central Asia. Her reporting is focused on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and on developments inside Russia, from the Kremlin’s crackdown to the effect of sanctions and attempts to evade them. Previously, she covered Russia and Ukraine for Reuters as a Special Correspondent on the investigative team. She joined the FT in 2021 and was shortlisted for the George Orwell Prize for Political Journalism in 2022 and for the Foreign Affairs Reporting prize at the British Journalism Awards in 2023.

A Glasgow-native turned global storyteller, Quentin Sommerville has built a career reporting on the world's most dangerous hotspots. His early days as a Shanghai and Beijing correspondent honed his skills for navigating across cultures, while his three-year stint as the BBC’s Afghanistan correspondent brought him face-to-face with the human cost of conflict. Now based in Beirut, Sommerville covers the Middle East, from the ongoing conflicts in Libya and Syria to further afield in Eastern Ukraine. Through his insightful reporting, he gives a voice to those living in the midst of turmoil, offering viewers a glimpse into the dark reality of war.

Rachel Corp is Chief Executive Officer of ITN, overseeing one of the largest independent television production companies in the UK. Prior to becoming CEO, Rachel was Editor of ITV News where she led the team winning a string of journalism awards for coverage in the UK and globally. Other roles during her ITN career include Editor of 5 News as well as ITV News London.  Rachel began her ITN career as a trainee, spending time at 5 News as part of its launch team before taking up a series of roles covering major stories in the UK and abroad for ITV News. Rachel also spent time in Russia as the BBC’s senior Moscow producer. Rachel leads on D&I and is passionate about change on and off screen, and also undertakes regular speaking appearances advocating for high-quality, independent, trusted news and the importance of Public Service Broadcasting. She is currently the chair of Women in Journalism as well as a UK Board Trustee at Women for Women International. Rachel is also an alumnus of LBS’s Senior Executive Programme (SEP).

Razia Iqbal is the John L Weinberg/Goldman Sachs Visiting Professor at Princeton University.Before that she spent 34 years as a BBC journalist.

Rena Effendi is a filmmaker, writer, an award-winning documentary photographer and author of two monographs “Pipe Dreams: A Chronicle of Lives along the Pipeline” and “Liquid Land”. Her photography has been described as having a deep sense of empathy with a quiet celebration of the strength of the human spirit. She is the laureate of the Prince Claus Fund award and has been shortlisted for the prestigious Prix Pictet award in Photography and Sustainability. She spoke at the World Economic Forum in Davos twice and is a member of its Cultural Leadership network. Rena's work has been exhibited at the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Saatchi Gallery, İstanbul Modern, Venice Biennial and NYC MOMA. Rena is a National Geographic Explorer and a frequent contributor to the National Geographic Magazine. She is a member of the VII Foundation. Photo credit: Lana Slezic

Ryan Broderick is a tech journalist and the author of the award-winning Garbage Day newsletter. He also writes for publications such as Fast Company, The Verge, and Rest Of World. His work has taken to over 22 countries and he's also met a lot of internet famous animals.

Salar Abdoh is a novelist, essayist and translator. His books include The Poet Game, Opium, Tehran At Twilight and the crime compilation that he edited and translated, Tehran Noir. His novel, Out of Mesopotamia (2020), was a New York Times Editors’ Pick and selected as a Best Book of 2020 by Publishers Weekly, called “one of the great war novels of our time.” His latest book is A Nearby Country Called Love, published in the fall of 2023. He is also a Director of Creative Writing at the City University of New York and lives between Tehran and New York City.

Salomé Jashi is a documentary filmmaker from Georgia. Her film Taming the Garden [2021] premiered at Sundance Film Festival's World Cinema Documentary Competition and Berlinale Forum and was nominated for the European Film Awards. Her earlier work The Dazzling Light of Sunset [2016] was awarded at Visions du Réel among other festivals and her mid-length Bakhmaro [2011] was nominated for the Asia Pacific Screen Awards. The body of her work includes features and shorts was featured at BAMPFA in a series of screenings and talks in 2023. She is chairperson and co-founder of Documentary Association Georgia (DOCA), and was a fellow of DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program [2020].

Sara M. Lomax is the co-founder and President of URL Media, a network of Black and Brown owned and led media organizations that share content, distribution and revenues to increase their long-term sustainability. In addition to her work with URL, Sara is CEO, President and Owner of WURD Radio, LLC, Pennsylvania’s only African-American owned talk radio station. Sara’s entire career has been focused on starting, growing and building Black media organizations to give voice and agency to communities that have been historically marginalized, overlooked and underserved. She is credited with transforming WURD Radio from a legacy talk radio station to a profitable multimedia communications company providing cutting edge, original programming on air, online and through community events. Over the past 3 years, the URL network has grown from an initial 8 members to 32 BIPOC media partners, reaching a total audience of over 25 million. Sara is the mother of three sons. She maintains a sense of equilibrium through a dedicated daily yoga and meditation practice.

Shazna Nessa is an American, British-Bangladeshi writer, currently writing Beneath the Same Stars, a literary memoir about a girl’s escape from child marriage, which ultimately leads her to a decades-long pursuit of an ever-shifting idea of truth, memory, and freedom. Shazna has a background in visual journalism and has worked at The Wall Street Journal, The Knight Foundation, The Associated Press, and Condé Nast. She was awarded a degree in linguistics, literature, and history from the Sorbonne, Paris. Fellowships include a MacDowell residency in 2024, a John S. Knight fellowship at Stanford University in 2014, and a Sulzberger fellowship at Columbia University in 2008. She is currently an entrepreneur in residence at the Brown Institute at Columbia University.

Shelley Thakral is the DRC spokesperson for the World Food Programme. She has also worked with the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, Facebook/Meta, World Health Organisation, UNICEF and was previously the WFP spokesperson in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Southern Africa and Yemen. She was a BBC journalist for 17 years and her postings have included; North America, the Middle East and South Asia.

An award-winning journalist, researcher and community organiser, Shirish’s work focuses on developing new ways to build more effective, engaging and inclusive journalism. Across a 25 year career, he’s worked in all the UK’s major broadcast newsrooms and at The Bureau of Investigative Journalism. Now, as News Innovation Research Fellow of the Media Cymru R&D consortium in Wales, he’s leading the “News for All” project – a collaboration with BBC News aimed at understanding and serving the information needs of people and communities who don’t currently see or get a value from journalism.In parallel, he’s also working on the People’s Newsroom, a project centred around the belief that collective story sharing can be at the heart of the transformational changes our societies need.

Siddharth Varadarajan is Founder-Editor of The Wire. Founded in 2015, The Wire is India's largest independent digital news and analysis platform with a reputation for investigative reporting and incisive coverage of events in India. Previously, he was editor of The Hindu, a multi-edition newspaper that has the second-highest circulation among India's English dailies. As a reporter, he has covered nuclear issues, NATO intervention in the Balkans as well as the conflict in Kashmir, the Iraq War, and the destruction of Afghanistan’s pre-Islamic heritage by the Taliban. He joined the Times of India as an editorial writer in 1994, following many years of teaching economics at New York University. In 2017, he was a recipient of the Shorenstein Journalism Award for his work defending free media in India. He has also been awarded the Bernardo O’Higgins Order by the President of Chile for journalism and promoting Indo-Latin American relations. He is the author of the book, Gujarat: The Making of a Tragedy (Penguin, 2002) and co-author of Non-Alignment 2.0: A Foreign and Strategic Policy for India in the 21st Century (Penguin, 2013). Siddharth has taught at the Graduate School of Journalism, University of California, Berkeley and been a Poynter Media Fellow at Yale University, besides being a senior fellow at the Centre for Public Affairs and Critical Theory, Shiv Nadar University, India.

Stephen Capus has served as RFE/RL’s President since January 1, 2024. In 2019 and 2020, he was the Senior Advisor to the CEO of the United States Agency for Global Media (USAGM), making frequent visits to each of the networks overseen by USAGM. During a 20-year career with NBC that included a nearly 8-year tenure as President of NBC News, Capus directed overall editorial and management operations, had oversight of global news coverage, served on NBC’s corporate management committees under the ownership of General Electric and Comcast, and oversaw MSNBC cable/digital, serving on the MSNBC joint venture board with Microsoft. Capus has also been the executive producer of NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw, MSNBC’s The News with Brian Williams, and countless NBC News special reports.

Stevie Valles is the CEO of Chicago Votes, a nonpartisan group of young people that runs civic education, voting, leadership development, and advocacy programs to shift the culture of participation and impact based in Chicago. At Chicago Votes he bottom lines fundraising, strategic planning, and policy, and advises in every other function at the organization. Since living in Chicago he has been a member of several local and national leadership committees and professional boards, including: Governor J.B. Pritzker's Transition Committee, The Chicago 200 Steering Committee, The City of Chicago Civic Engagement Advisory Council, The Change Illinois Board of Directors, and The Circle for Justice Innovations. He is an active member of the Illinois Prison Project Board of Directors, the Alliance for Justice Safety's Board of Directors, and Demand Justice Illinois Steering Committee.

Tamara Arveladze holds a Bachelor’s degree in InternationalRelations and Global Politics from IE University (Graduated in 2020). She was aYoung Ambassador of Georgia to the Kingdom of Spain (GYA) in 2018 and is a founding member of the "Shame Movement" since 2019. She has been involved in the campaigns "Get out the vote" in 2020 and "Home 2 Europe" in 2022. She is currently a project manager of the Awareness Campaign for the Food Waste Prevention Project, funded by the EU and powered by PIN. She is also communications officer in the Neurodevelopment Center Georgia.

Tazo Kupreishvili serves as the editor for the independent Georgian online publication, Netgazeti.ge. Alongside Batumelebi.ge, Netgazeti.ge has won several local and international awards. Since 2009, Tazo has been an active journalist across various Georgian media outlets, with notable focus on covering protests within Georgia. His field of interest is human rights coverage, specifically, the rights of various vulnerable groups, including women, queer groups, ethnic and religious minorities. Additionally, Tazo was a member of the Council of the Charter of Journalistic Ethics of Georgia. Tazo is among those journalists who, in addition to their professional activities, protested against the "Russian law" on foreign agents.

In the heart of Georgia's culinary scene stands Tekuna Gachechiladze, a visionery who has reshaped the landscape of traditional Georgian cuisine with her innovative flair and international influence. Graduating from the esteemed New York Culinary Institute, Tekuna's journey began with a strong foundation in culinary arts, complemented by her earlier academic persuits in psychology in Germany.

Tessa Pang is an Impact Producer at Lighthouse Reports. She works to ensure Lighthouse’s findings are strategically placed to create tangible change on the issues they investigate. She predominantly focuses on issues of power imbalance within the world's food systems, but also works across the migration and borders newsrooms. Before joining Lighthouse, she was a digital campaigner fighting for progressive change on issues such as refugee rights, climate change and fast-fashion factory safety.

Thorniké GORDADZE is a former State Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration of Georgia. He has been the Chief Negotiator for Georgia on the Association Agreement and the Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreement (DCFTA) negotiations with the EU (2010-2012). From 2014 to 2020 he was the head of the Research and Studies Department at the Institute for Higher National Defense Studies in Paris, France (2014-2019). He was a Senior Fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) (2021-2022). Currently he teaches at the Paris Institute of Political Studies (SciencesPo), and Eastern neighbourhood and Black Sea fellow at Jacques Delors Institute (Paris/Brussels). Thornike Gordadze holds PhD in Political Science (2005) from Paris SciencesPo.

Toor Pekai Yousafzai is from Swat Pakistan and is known as Malala’s mother. Patriarchal norms and structures meant that girls’ schools weren’t available when Toor was young, and so she was unable to receive an education. Toor started learning informally after first marrying in Pakistan and then, in the UK, began to learn English. She has been very socially active in her home town in supporting underprivileged children in education and continues her philanthropic work.

Dr. Volodymyr Yermolenko is a Ukrainian philosopher, journalist, writer, public lecturer and the president of PEN Ukraine. He is a doctor of political studies (France) and has a PhD in philosophy (candidate of science, Ukraine). He is also the analytics director at Internews Ukraine, one of the biggest and oldest Ukrainian media NGOs, chief editor of UkraineWorld.org, a multimedia project in English about Ukrainian, and associate professor at Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. For his non-fiction and fiction books he has won the Myroslav Popovych Prize (2021), Petro Mohyla Prize (2021), Yurii Sheveliov Prize (2018), and Book of the Year prize in Ukraine (2018, 2015) among others. He is head of the board of the International Renaissance Foundation (OSI Network). He is an expert in information analysis and media literacy; architect and trainer at several media literacy projects within the activity of Internews Ukraine and UkraineWorld. He has co-founder and authored the podcasts Kult:Podcast (in Ukrainian) and Explaining Ukraine (in English). He is also the anchorman of TV programmes Ukraina Rozumna and Hromadske.Svit at Hromadske.ua (2016-2020). His articles and commentary have appeared in The Economist, Le Monde, Financial Times, New York Times, Newsweek, and he often gives comments to the BBC, CNN, Al Jazeera and France 24 among others.

Yaroslav Trofimov is the author of three books of narrative non-fiction and one novel. He has worked around the world as a foreign correspondent of The Wall Street Journal since 1999, and has served as the newspaper’s chief foreign-affairs correspondent since 2018. Born in Kyiv, Ukraine, he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in international reporting in 2023 for his work on Ukraine, and in 2022, for his work on Afghanistan. His honors include an Overseas Press Club award for coverage of India as well as the Washington Institute gold medal for the best book on the Middle East. Yaroslav holds an MA from New York University. He is represented by Elias Altman at Massie & McQuilkin literary agency in New York.

Yoeri Albrecht joined De Balie as General & Artistic director in 2010. After having studied History, Philosophy, and International Law at Leiden University, he moved to Oxford to continue his studies in European Politics. In Oxford, he learned from the likes of Isaiah Berlin, George Steiner, and Peter Pulzer. Quickly, Yoeri became junior dean at Queen’s College, teaching both history and philosophy. It was already during his studies that Yoeri started writing pieces for Vrij Nederland, where he would continue to make contributions for 15 years to come, his writing ranging from interviews, columns, essays, and pieces of investigative journalism. Over the years, Yoeri has found a legion of ways to bring stories to light: through film, documentaries, theatre, books, radio, and television. Since 2010, he has watched De Balie grow from an Amsterdam-oriented debate center into a permanent and daily international art festival. De Balie has become an art producing cultural institute, still home to intellectuals, dissidents, and aspiring artists alike. Beyond being director of De Balie, Yoeri is founder and board member of the European Press Prize, chair of media investment company Veronica and he has chaired organizations such as Wordt Vervolgd Magazine, Amnesty International The Netherlands and Open Society Initiative for Europe. As a member of the board of Bellingcat he was responsible for bringing the British organization to Amsterdam.