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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Geoff Dyer is a writer whose many books include the novel “Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi,” “Yoga For People Who Can’t Be Bothered To Do It,” ”The Last Days of Roger Federer” and, most recently, “Homework: A Memoir.”

He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, an Honorary Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. His books have won numerous prizes and have been translated into 26 languages.

Ghaith Abdulahad is an award-winning Iraqi author and journalist, born and raised in Baghdad. He studied architecture at the University of Baghdad before turning to journalism in the aftermath of the 2003 U.S. invasion.

Since then, Ghaith has reported extensively for The Guardian, covering major conflicts across the Middle East and beyond, including Syria, Libya, Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen, and Iraq.

His reporting has won multiple awards, including the Orwell Prize in journalism, the British Press Award and two Emmys. In 2023, Ghaith published his critically acclaimed debut book, “A Stranger in Your Own City,” an account of the catastrophic aftermath of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and of the years of civil war that followed.

Giorgi Kandelaki is the project manager at the Soviet Past Research Laboratory (SovLab), a leading Georgian think tank focused on investigating the legacy of Soviet totalitarianism in Georgia and countering its manipulation through Russian disinformation. He served as a member of the Georgian Parliament from 2008 to 2020, where he worked to expose and challenge Russian policies toward Georgia on the international stage.
A vocal critic of ambivalence toward the Soviet past, Kandelaki has advocated for a deeper re-examination of Georgia’s democratic and European heritage, particularly during the period of the Democratic Republic of Georgia (1918 to 1921), and for incorporating historical memory into broader Western counter-disinformation strategies.
In 2010, through his initiative, the Georgian Parliament designated February 25th as the Day of Soviet Occupation. In 2012, he helped launch a project to transform the Stalin Museum in Gori into the Museum of Stalinism, a plan that was halted in 2013 by the Georgian Dream government. He also introduced legislation in 2018 to open Soviet-era archives, which was later rejected by the ruling party.
Kandelaki frequently publishes on the contemporary impact of the Soviet legacy and is a regular commentator in both Georgian and international media. Most recently, he appeared in the Netflix documentary series The Turning Point: The Bomb and the Cold War. He also co-edited Georgia vs Joseph Stalin, a collaborative popular history book published by SovLab and acclaimed Georgian writer Lasha Bugadze.

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.

Giulia Trincardi is an author and lecturer based in Milan. She  teaches Digital Cultures and Worldbuilding for Interactive Media at NABA, Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti, with a focus on playfulness as a practice for questioning dominant narratives. She studied Media Design, Game Analysis, and Screenwriting, and has worked as Science and Tech Editor at VICE Italy, featured on festivals and pop culture talk shows and created YouTube and podcast content.

Giulia is currently translating her passion for tabletop RPGs into the design of tailored serious play experiences for companies and institutions.

Hans Gutbrod is a professor at Ilia State University in Tbilisi, Georgia. He writes on politics, ethics, and commemoration. He previously was the regional director of the Caucasus Research Resource Centers.

Hans has been working in the Caucasus region since 1999 and holds a Ph.D. in International Relations from the London School of Economics. One of his interests is an Ethics of Political Commemoration to help order public debates on remembrance.

Heather Chaplin is the founding director of the Journalism + Design major and the Journalism + Design Lab at The New School University. She is the author of “Reckless Years: A Diary of Love and Madness”  and the co-author of S”martbomb: The Quest for Art, Entertainment and Big Bucks in the Videogame Revolution.”

Heather co-hosts  “Journalism 2050,” a co-production of Columbia Journalism Review and The Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia. Her work has appeared in All Things Considered, The New York Times, The LA Times, The Cut, GQ, Details and Vogue, among other places.

Heather is currently working on a series of books about the witch trial known as the Affair of the Poison in 17th century France.

Ianthe Mosselman is a Dutch writer, interviewer, and cultural programmer at De Balie in Amsterdam. She is known for her work in literature, feminism, and contemporary social issues. As a program maker and moderator at De Balie, she has interviewed numerous leading authors and public figures.

In 2022, Ianthe published “Al die liefde en woede” (“All That Love and Rage”), a personal and critical reflection on motherhood, gender equality, and ambition. She has also contributed essays and opinion pieces to Dutch media and is recognized for promoting the visibility of women writers. In addition to her literary work, Ianthe  has written for theatre and musical productions.

Inna Gadzynska is a Ukrainian journalist with nearly 20 years of experience in both online and print media. Since 2019, she has been a journalist at Texty.org.ua, a Ukrainian data journalism outlet. She writes analytical articles on the war in Ukraine and its impact across various aspects of life, investigating media and social media manipulation, as well as Russian propaganda. As a journalist and editor, Inna collaborates with colleagues on data journalism projects.

In 2026, she, along with a group of co-authors from Texty.org.ua and Swiss media outlet NZZ, received a Sigma Award for a joint journalistic investigation. In 2024, she was nominated for the European Press Prize's Innovation Award.
In 2022, Inna and her co-authors received “the Honor of the Profession” at the National Ukrainian Journalism Contest.

From 2003 to 2011, Inna worked as a reporter and deputy editor at the city daily newspaper "Газета по-киевски" (a Kyiv-based newspaper) and served as the editor-in-chief of a chain of hyperlocal weekly newspapers in Kyiv called Our District’s Newspaper.

Inna Varenytsia is an award-winning war correspondent and documentary filmmaker who has worked for Reuters, The Telegraph and Ukrainian media, collaborating with Associated Press. She covers topics related to war and its impact on society and investigates war crimes, with a particular focus on the ethics of communicating with children who have lost loved ones and issues of memorialization.

Irina Matchavariani is a producer and programming coordinator at Coda Story. She came into storytelling from a background in International Relations and has since worked in radio, print, and digital media. Her reporting has appeared on NPR, WBUR, the Miami Herald, and other outlets. A Fulbright scholar, she earned her master’s degree in journalism from the University of Missouri. She was named an Innovation Fellow at the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute and received the SPJ Mark of Excellence Award in Arts and Fashion Journalism. She currently teaches Print Media at the Caucasus School of Media in Tbilisi. Irina has lived and studied on three continents and speaks six languages. She likes to think this experience shapes how she sees, interprets, and tells stories.

Irma Dimitradze is a Communications Manager and journalist at Gazeti Batumelebi LLC, an independent Georgian media organization that operates online outlets batumelebi.ge and netgazeti.ge. She recently investigated and exposed the abuse of personal data — including special category data — affecting tens of thousands of voters by Georgia's ruling party ahead of the October 2024 elections. Dimitradze has a particular interest in China-Georgia relations and is actively engaged in independent media advocacy programs. She is also a member of the International Press Institute (IPI), a Vienna-based global network of editors, media executives, and leading journalists.

Isabel (Izzy) Evans is a New York-based documentary film and podcast producer. Her recent work includes “War Game,” a political thriller documentary that premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival and was named a New York Times Critics’ Pick; the Emmy winning “Girls State” for Apple TV; and “I’m Not A Monster,” a two part docuseries for HBO with Imagine Entertainment.

Isabel is the director of two short documentaries, “Renter Revolt: Housing and Human Rights in America’s Heartland” for TIME in partnership with the Economic Hardship Reporting Project and the Pulitzer Center, and “The Dog King of the Upper East Side,” which won best doc at the Brooklyn Short Festival.

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.

Iva Pezuashvili is a Georgian writer. He studied film at the Shota Rustaveli Theatre and Film University.

In 2018, Iva  won a scholarship for the international writing program at the University of Iowa. He has been publishing his stories since 2012. His first collection "ITried" appeared in 2014. One of his stories "Tsa" has been included in anthologies like "The Book of Tbilisi" and "Georgien - Eineliterarische Einladung". His debut novel "Gospel of the Underground" was shortlisted for a number of Georgian literary awards. His next book "The Garbage Chute" won the European Union Prize For Literature and Major literary awards in Georgia, such as Tsinandali Award and Saba.

"The Garbage Chute" is published in several European countries and also in Canada. Iva’s novel "Mascarafone" was winner of 2023 Saba in Novel of the Year category while latest work “For Edelweisses” is a major bestseller.

Jake Friedman is a manager, producer, and partner working across music, theater, film, and new media.

As a manager  across two companies he co-founded, clients have included Regina Spektor, Marc Rebillet, Nicole Scherzinger, Nicolas Jaar, DARKSIDE, Beach House, Dirty Projectors, Caroline Polachek, Sleigh Bells, and the Estate of Leonard Cohen.

As a producer, Jake’s credits include “Derek DelGaudio's In” and “Of Itself,” produced with Tom Werner and Stephen Colbert, acquired by Hulu/Disney+; Neal Brennan's “Blocks” at the Cherry Lane Theatre and Netflix; and “An Evening with Nicole Scherzinger: Live at Royal Albert Hall.”

As a partner, Jake’s ventures include Garbage Day Media (newsletter, events, and podcasts); Partica Studios with Peter McIndoe (live streaming, LIFE Magazine, Birds Aren't Real); and Gymnasium with Adam Faze.

Jamie Daves is an entrepreneur, investor, and media leader. He is the Founder of Everyone Inc., a venture studio dedicated to building, investing in, and advising companies solving large scale economic and social problems. His recent ventures include a partnering with longtime news executive Claudia Milne to co-found Backbone, a company tackling the challenge of misinformation and low-trust in news and other information-based content, and an investment in Cognitive Scientific, a world model-based AI company enabling automation, scientific discovery and other fundamental capabilities.

Jamie is a partner in Firehouse Media which launches creative projects and partnerships with innovators in television, film, and art. He serves as a venture partner at Lifeforce Capital and is a senior advisor and board member to multiple health ventures. Jamie is a board member of Institute for New Economic Thinking and co-founder and board member of The Neurorights Foundation. A pioneer in the “creator economy,” Jamie co-founded Current TV alongside Vice President Al Gore, and helped to launch The Wrap, ImpactAlpha, and other digital media companies.

His public sector and civic work include serving at the Federal Communications Commission, teaching at The New School, and co-founding organizations such as The Full Circle Fund.

Jamie holds an MBA from Stanford University and a BA from University of Pennsylvania. He is a frequent speaker on the future of technology, the economy, and politics.

Jane Martinson is a journalist, academic and author. Her book on secretive billionaires, the Barclay brothers, “You May Never See Us Again – the Barclay Dynasty: A story of Survival, Secrecy and Succession,” was published in October 2023.

Jane is the Marjorie Deane Professor of Financial Journalism at City, University of London, and a regular columnist for the Guardian. In 2025, she was appointed to the Board of the The Scott Trust, the sole shareholder of Guardian Media Group. She is also a member of the Observer Editorial Standards Board, a trustee of the Wincott Foundation to promote financial journalism and an executive committee member of Women in Journalism. Jane is a regular broadcaster and expert on the media, business and gender.

Janna Levin is a professor of physics and astronomy at Barnard College of Columbia University. A Guggenheim Fellow, she has contributed to our understanding of black holes, extra dimensions, and cosmology. She is the Founding Director of Sciences at Pioneer Works and the co-editor-in-chief of Pioneer Works Broadcast. She often contributes to news, documentaries, and radio, including as the presenter of the NOVA feature Black Hole Apocalypse on PBS. She has authored books on black holes — “Black Hole Blues and How the Universe Got its Spots” — as well as a PEN award–winning novel, “A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines.” Her most recent book is “Black Hole Survival Guide.” You can find Janna’s current writings on her Substack publication, Higher Dimensions.

Joe Sabia is a filmmaker and digital artist with an intuitive talent for conceiving viral concepts and formats. He 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.
In 2024, Joe directed his first feature film, FEDERER: 12 FINAL DAYS, for Amazon Studios, documenting the retirement of Roger Federer from tennis, alongside director Asif Kapadia. He currently serves as a creative director for TEAM8 Studios, leading the development and execution of commercial content for Roger Federer and Ben Shelton.
Joe was the SVP of Creative Development at Condé Nast Entertainment, where he led the creation of digital franchises like Wired’s Autocomplete Interviews, Vanity Fair’s Lie Detector Interviews, Glamour’s You Sang My Song, and GQ’s Actually Me.
In 2011, Joe received a content innovation grant from YouTube to launch a music video channel called CDZA, which involved 150 conservatory-trained musicians, gained 300,000 subscribers in 18 months, and performed alongside Arcade Fire and Lady Gaga during YouTube’s first-ever YouTube Music Awards, collaborating with Spike Jonze.
Joe is an advisor to MasterClass, The Moth, Outlier.org, and Tonebase Piano. He currently runs his own creative strategy agency and production company called Somehow Studios, working with clients like Audible, YouTube, Spotify, American Express, Carnegie Hall, and UNICEF.
Joe is a lifelong classical piano lover and amateur pianist (and a member of the Franz Liszt Society, with his car’s license plate reading “B LISZT”). He considers himself an unofficial cultural ambassador to the country of Georgia, has dual citizenship with the US and Italy, gave a TED Talk, won an international pun championship, and once drove from England to Mongolia in a small Fiat for charity. He splits his time between NYC and Dutchess County, NY. He'll become a dad this summer.

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.

Jorg Skorobogatov is a photographer and art director born in Kazakhstan. He has lived in Georgia, Ukraine, Turkey, China and the UAE, among others.

His career has included roles as a mechanic, a flower seller, an interpreter, a journalist, a photographer, and an advertising art director. Currently he is working as a photographer again, depicting the football culture in Tbilisi.

Joshi Herrmann is the founder of Mill Media, which publishes high-quality local journalism in seven UK cities. Best known for its emphasis on narrative storytelling, the company has moved away from conventional news writing in favor of local journalism. Its 25 journalists publish award-winning investigations, but  also prioritize stories that help readers to feel more connected to the places they live.

Mill Media has received investment from figures including Sir Mark Thompson, CNN chief executive and former BBC director general. The former Vanity Fair and New Yorker editor Tina Brown said: “If I was a young writer right now, I would want to work for Mill Media.”

In the past,  Joshi has reported for The Times, The Telegraph, The Guardian, and The London Evening Standard.  In 2025 he won a British Journalism Award along with his colleague Mollie Simpson for their reporting on the University of Greater Manchester, a story which has prompted a police investigation into “serious allegations of fraud and bribery.”

Julia Watson started in publishing before moving first to the UK’s Sunday Times, then the Observer. She spent four years in Moscow as the Evening Standard’s first Russia Foreign Correspondent before transferring to Washington DC. There she wrote a weekly column for a UK national and features for other UK and U.S. outlets.

Back in London, Julia worked on the food and style pages of the Mail On Sunday’s YOU Magazine before returning to Washington DC where she was the Food Writer for United Press International and wrote on style and food for the Washington Post, Gourmet, a newspaper group, and others and ran her own food website, eatWashington.com

She is the author of novels “Russian Salad” and “American Pie” and compiler of children’s poetry collections for Puffin, Armada Lions, Collins and Faber, and contributor to books on house style and food. The German edition of Bruno’s Cookbook, also published by Knopf and Quercus and co-authored with novelist Martin Walker, won Gourmand International’s award for World’s Best French Cookbook. She writes Tabled, a weekly Substack on food, and for The Globalist and The American Table.

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.

June Tan is a producer, scriptwriter and member of the arts collective Five Arts Centre, based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. She works on creating platforms for artmaking and  social activism. She studied Biology at Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine and worked in the corporate world while stage-managing, tour-managing and producing numerous performing arts projects.

In 2026 June became the Artistic Director of KL Festival, a month-long arts and cultural festival organized by the city. From 2018-2020 she was the director for TPAM in Yokohama, an arts platform reflecting contemporary thinking in Asia. She is also active in ReformARTsi, a grassroots coalition seeking arts policy change.

June has been writing for film and TV for over 10 years and has written and produced films that were released in cinemas and  on regional OTT platforms. In 2022, June as one of the co-writers, won Best Screenplay for “Spilt Gravy on Rice” at the national Malaysian Film Festival.

Kaizar Campwala works with innovative journalism ventures to build pathways to sustainability. Currently, he serves as Zeg’s Chief Revenue Officer. Previously, he led business development at the pioneering podcast platform Stitcher and launched global podcasting in English and Arabic for Al Jazeera. He  also served as vice president and general manager of ABC News digital, where he grew their streaming channel, ABC News Live, into the top live news stream on platforms like Roku, YouTube, and Hulu.

Kaizar also co-founded Calmatters, now the largest newsroom covering politics and policy in California, and Slow Talk, an AI-powered deliberation platform amplifying the voices of America’s most critical workforces.

Karen Hao is the NYT bestselling author of “Empire of AI” and an award-winning reporter covering the impacts of artificial intelligence on society. She co-hosts the BBC podcast “The Interface” and contributes to publications including More Perfect Union and The Atlantic. She also co-created the Pulitzer Center's AI Spotlight Series, a program that has trained thousands of journalists around the world on how to cover AI.

Karen was formerly a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, covering American and Chinese tech companies, and a senior editor for AI at MIT Technology Review. She has received numerous accolades for her coverage, including an American Humanist Media Award, an American National Magazine Award for Journalists Under 30, and a TIME100 AI honor. She received her Bachelor of Science in mechanical engineering from MIT.

Ketevan Kavtaradze is a Georgian business executive and the CEO of Sinatle Media, a solidarity and sustainability network of 22 independent online media outlets across the country. The mission of Sinatle Media is to protect, strengthen and develop Georgia’s independent media ecosystem through collaboration, innovation and collective action.

For more than a decade, Ketevan  has held senior leadership roles across business, communications, technology and organizational development. In response to growing pressure on independent journalism in Georgia, she helped establish Sinatle Media and led “The Lights Must Stay On” —  Georgia’s first nationwide crowdfunding campaign supporting independent media.

Kirsten Dawes was born in South Africa and read Musicology and German Studies at the University of Cape Town as well as Holocaust History at Uppsala University in Sweden. She moved to Germany in the early 2000s to continue her studies, focusing on the history of musicology in the Third Reich. Her freelance work has included projects with the Berliner Philharmoniker, where she collaborated with Catherine Milliken on the “Zukunft@BPhil” education initiatives. She subsequently worked for two years as project manager at Junge Deutsche Philharmonie.

In 2008 Kirsten joined the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen as tour manager, later becoming Head of the Touring Department and a member of the programming committee. From 2015 to 2016 she was responsible for the artistic planning of the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Festival and for the festival’s overall program. Since 2016 she has been part of the Pierre Boulez Saal team, initially as Head of Artistic Operations and, since 2023, as Artistic Director. In addition, Kirsten has served as a juror for numerous chamber music competitions.

Kumi Naidoo is a South African human rights and environmental justice activist who is currently the president of the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty. He is the former secretary-general of Amnesty International (2018–2020) and also the first person from the Global South to lead Greenpeace International (2009–2015). He is an advisor for the Community Arts Network.
Kumi serves as a global ambassador for Africans Rising for Justice, Peace and Dignity. His family has started the Riky Rick Foundation for the Promotion of Artivism to build on the positive legacies left by popular South African rapper Rikhado “Riky Rick” Makhado through his music and life’s work. Through this foundation, Kumi co-founded the Global Energising Artivism Initiative. He is also the author of the award-winning “Letters to My Mother: The Makings of a Troublemaker” and the host of the podcast “Power, People and Planet.”

Lasha Kveseladze is an investigative journalist and a 2024–2025 Nieman Fellow at Harvard University.

With over 20 years of experience in broadcast journalism, Lasha has exposed deep-seated corruption and political conflicts of interest in Georgia, airing his investigations on the flagship shows P.S. and Post Factum during his tenure with Rustavi 2 and Main Channel.

He is also the co-founder of the data-tracking platform kavshirebi.com ("Connections"). He won the 2018 GIPA Friedman Prize for his investigation into the high-profile disappearance of Afgan Mukhtarli.

Lasha has lectured in investigative reporting at the University of Georgia and GIPA.

Laurence Lee spent 30 years working in national and international television news before leaving his career to establish a program aimed at helping disadvantaged young people with oracy and speaking skills. He currently works with the Financial Times’s Early Careers Unit, with recovering drug and alcohol addicts in south east England and is an ambassador for the charity Action for Stammering Children.

Leopoldo López is a freedom  activist from Venezuela. He was a political prisoner from 2014 to 2020 after being sentenced to 14 years in prison for leading non-violent street protests and civil resistance in 2014. After spending seven years in confinement, he managed to escape the autocratic regime of Nicolas Maduro in October 2020 and was able to travel to Spain where he lives with his family.

From 2000 to 2008 Leopoldo  was mayor of the Municipality of Chacao in Caracas and was later illegally disqualified to run for office. He won his case at the Inter American Commission on Human Rights.. In 2009, he founded the political party and freedom movement called Voluntad Popular (Popular Will) and became its national coordinator.

Leopoldo is the co-founder of the World Liberty Congress, an organization that seeks to serve as the counterweight against the global autocratic alliance by connecting non-violent, pro-democracy activists and leaders from across the globe. He is also a visiting fellow at the Wilson Center and The Institute, and has been teaching at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies in Stanford University.

Leopoldo is married to Lilian Tintori and has three children.

Levan Kalandarishvili is a Tbilisi-based architect and researcher, and an associate professor at the Visual Arts, Architecture and Design School (VAADS) at the Free University of Tbilisi, where he teaches a course on the history of urban development.

Since graduating from the Tbilisi State Academy of Arts in 1980, he has worked at various design institutes and now works as a freelancer, focusing on both research and conceptual projects. Levan’s research interests include the historical development of vernacular, industrial, and modernist architecture in Georgia. His recent contributions include articles on the Constructivist movement in Georgia and a narrative on the life and work of the prominent Georgian architect Lado Alexi-Meskhishvili.

Lika Antadze is an executive director of the award-winning, independent media outlet Chai Khana, which produces analysis, opinion, long-form reporting, and photo documentary coverage of current affairs in Georgia.  Previously serving audiences across the South Caucasus, the media outlet has since 2025 evolved to focus on covering the social, political, and cultural changes shaping Georgia.

Alongside her role at Chai Khana, Lika has been leading Kinedok Georgia, a community-driven distribution of creative documentary films outside cinemas with a network of 200 untraditional venues across 5 European countries.

Lika’s professional interests include media sustainability, digital security and the intersection of ethics and technology. She also serves as a board member of Sinatle Media, a network of 22 Georgian independent online media organizations working in solidarity and resilience in response to legal and political pressure.

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.”

Lotte Geeven is an interdisciplinary artist who integrates humanitarian and research activities into her artistic practice. With a focus on people in conflict and uprising, she works across Europe, Asia, and the United States.

Her work has been presented at leading institutions including  the Nobel Peace Center) and The British Museum. Often in collaboration with others, Lotte creates recordings of phenomena that reveal insights into the state of humanity and the earth itself. She regularly works with scientists to develop new technologies and methods that allow us to listen more empathetically to our world,  giving voice to the unheard. Her practice is driven by exploration, collectivity, and engagement. Lotte received the Illy Prize for Most Innovative Artist and was nominated for the CIVIS European Media Prize 2026.

Luba Kassova is a journalist, researcher, and co-founder of the audience strategy consultancy AKAS. Formerly Head of Audiences at BBC News, she is the author of the award-winning “Missing Perspectives” report series and a PhD candidate at the University of Westminster.

In March 2026, Luba was recognized by JournalismUK as one of 25 standout women in the industry. Her evidence-based reporting and research on marginalized audiences have been featured in major global outlets across 80 countries, including The Guardian, Fortune, The Independent, Foreign Policy, and El País.

Mahsa Alimardani is the Associate Director of Technology Threats and Opportunities at WITNESS, the global human rights organization, where she leads a portfolio on AI and visual truth, including deepfake detection, synthetic media and the human rights implications of AI-generated content.  At WITNESS, Mahsa founded and incubated the Direct2Cell coalition, which brings together human rights organizations to confront the human rights implications of satellite-to-phone connectivity in closed information environments.

Iranian-Canadian and based in London, Mahsa has spent 15 years working at the intersection of technology and human rights, particularly within authoritarian contexts such as Iran, where she has documented how the Islamic Republic builds and weaponises its internet infrastructure against its own people. Her latest essays for The Atlantic delve into AI, protest and conflict in Iran. Her writing and work have been featured in Wired, the BBC, France 24, CNN and British Vogue. She is also a researcher with the University of Oxford's Oxford Internet Institute and served as an Open Tech Fund Senior Information Control Fellow.

Marcela Mora y Araujo is an Argentina-born, U.K.-based football writer for radio, broadcasting and print media since the early 1990s. Widely regarded as one of the leading voices on international football, her work looks at the game as a cultural manifestation of the sociopolitical contexts in which it occurs, akin to other art forms.

She translated Diego Maradona’s autobiography into English, co-authored the autobiography of Osvaldo Ardiles, and authored Random House Argentina’s first digital essay, on Carlos Tevez. She is one of the few journalists alive to have met Di Stefano, Maradona and Messi.

Marcela has produced work ranging from football-related violence to the international transfer market for specialized publications, academic forums, and human rights organizations. She has co-edited volumes of football literature stories as well as recorded footballers reading poems for broadcast.

A regular contributor to the BBC she has broadcast also for Al Jazeera, CNN, Deutsche Welle and Fox Sports Argentina. Her journalism has been published in the Guardian, the Observer, the Financial Times, The Economist, Project Syndicate, The Telegraph, La Nacion, Clarín, Ole, Página 12, diario.ar, The Times of India, Four Four Two, Time Out, Cambio 16, Etiqueta Negra, Chimurenga, Slate, Hard Gras, The Blizzard, Perfect Pitch, Piauí.

She has twice won Silver in the Best Column category of the AIPS Media Awards, and is currently ranked number 2 in the Americas by the same body for audio content. She led the journalistic investigation for the BBC documentary “World Cup Stories – Argentina”, looking at the political context around two World Cup wins in 1978 and 1986 which received a Royal Television Society Award.

Mariam Jachvadze is a media professional with over a decade of experience in storytelling, production, and journalism. She is driven by curiosity, context, and a belief that well-told stories can shape how we understand the world.

Mariam currently serves as an editor at Chai Khana, an online media platform covering current events in Georgia through feature articles and documentary photo stories. Her work sits at the intersection of society, culture, social issues, and human experience. She has also worked with the BBC, The Wall Street Journal, and Vice News.

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Mariam Tsertsvadze is a strategic communications professional, civil society leader and animal rights advocate whose work sits at the intersection of Georgia’s European future and its democratic present.

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For more than a decade, she has worked on Georgia’s European integration, contributing to milestones including the Association Agreement and visa liberalization. Most recently, she worked at the EU Delegation to Georgia, where she shaped strategic communications during one of the most difficult political periods in Georgia’s modern history amid growing disinformation, political polarization, and democratic backsliding.

Mari Sukhishvili is a Georgian creative director with over 12 years of experience in the advertising industry. Former executive creative director at Windfor’s Tbilisi, she has been recognized at leading international festivals including Cannes Lions, Eurobest, Golden Hammer, and ADC*E.

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Martha Dark is Director and co-founder of the tech justice non-profit, Foxglove, that exists to make tech fair for everyone. Before founding Foxglove, she held senior roles in several leading human rights and social justice organizations, including as chief operating officer at Open Rights Group and head of operations at Reprieve.

Martin G. Reynolds is a journalist, editor and lyricist whose career has moved through the often complementary — and occasionally contrary — worlds of journalism and music.

A former editor-in-chief of the Oakland Tribune and co-founder of Oakland Voices, he now serves as co-executive director of the Robert C. Maynard Institute for Journalism Education, where he works to strengthen journalism’s ability to cover communities with accuracy, complexity and care.

Martin came up through the innovative San Francisco Bay Area hip-hop jazz scene, writing and performing with Jungle Biskit, Bop City Pacific and Mingus Amungus. His work as a lyricist and performer has taken him to the Monterey Jazz Festival, Istanbul Jazz Festival and Playboy Jazz Festival, among many other stages, and has included performances alongside artists such as Christian McBride and Carlos Santana. He appears on albums including Mingus Amungus’ “Live in Cuba” and “Isms,” and Bop City Pacific’s “Swollen, Present to Past.”

Martin has long believed that journalism made him a better lyricist — sharpening his ear for detail, character and truth — and that being a lyricist made him a better storyteller, deepening his sense of rhythm, voice and emotional precision.

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, former editor at TANK Magazine and one of ZEG's hosts. 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.

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Matthew Pye is the founder of The Climate Academy  and has been Head of Philosophy at the European School Brussels II.

The Climate Academy programme provides a systemic, 360° view of the climate crisis; from the science of the Earth Systems, through to the political, economic, social and psychological dimensions of it all. The student book, with accompanying YouTube series, is available to download for free. In a world of misinformation, half-information, weaponized or commercialized information, The Climate Academy is committed to the public understanding of science & culture.

Matthew’s book “Plato Tackles Climate Change” examines the blind-spots of democracy concerning the crisis, and points forward to the power of the key leverage point for change: education, media and the law.  As a public speaker, Matthew has given lectures at the EU Commission, Cambridge University, other leading universities and many international schools.

Michael Barenboim is one of the leading violinists of his generation, performing as a soloist with the most renowned conductors and orchestras. He is also a professor at the Barenboim-Said Akademie, and concertmaster of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra.

Since early 2024, Michael has come into the spotlight for speaking out about Gaza. In May 2024, he held a federal press conference together with experts about the pro-Palestinian student protests. In August of the same year, he published a critique in the Süddeutsche Zeitung of the draft Bundestag resolution on antisemitism in the cultural sector.

At another federal press conference in Berlin, Michael stated: “The endless massacres that have taken place in the Gaza Strip, but also in the West Bank and Lebanon — and which have been broadcast almost live worldwide over the past 14 months — oblige Germany finally to end its support for Israel, whether military, diplomatic, or legal.”

Mchael delivered a speech at the Berlin “All Eyes on Gaza” rally with 100,000 participants in September 2025 and continued to contribute to the Süddeutsche Zeitung.

Michael is also part of Make Freedom Ring, a classical musicians’ collective that regularly organizes charity concerts for Palestine across Europe. He is a member of the association of Palestinian and Jewish Academics (PJA) and co-curates a talk series called “Kilmé Talks,” platforming Palestinian artists and academics. He is the creator of Ensemble Nasmé, a classical ensemble of Palestinian musicians touring throughout Europe.

Michael Bricker is a production designer and filmmaker who recently completed the design for the upcoming A24 TV series “Superfakes,” starring Lucy Liu and produced by Josh and Ben Safdie. His work includes the Peabody-winning “Dying for Sex,” starring Michelle Williams and Jenny Slate, and the first season of Netflix's “Russian Doll, for which he won both a Primetime Emmy and an Art Directors Guild Award.

Starting out in the independent film world in Austin, TX, Michael's early film credits include Andrew Bujaliski's Sundance-winning “Computer Chess” and Robbie Pickering's “Natural Selection,”winner of the 2011 SXSW Grand Jury Prize.

Michael holds a Master's in Architecture from the University of Texas at Austin, which sparked an interest in design history, travel, and sustainability. Michael has spoken about his work in Dwell, CityLab, Exhibit Columbus, USC Santa Barbara, The Indianapolis Museums of Art, The Production Designers Collective, AFTRS, and the University of Texas at Austin. Michael splits his time between New York and Sydney, Australia.

Michelle Rocha is the Head of Touring at Factory International that operates Manchester International Festival and Aviva Studios. She is currently the co-chairperson of the board of performing arts company Quarantine. Her work spans across performing, visual, digital arts and immersive experiences.

Michelle has worked with Ryuichi Sakamoto, Wayne McGregor, Rafael Lozeno-Hemmer, Luke Jerram, Phelim McDermott,  and pop artists including Linkin Park, Jamie xx, Oasis and more. She has led presentations of major works and training programs in New York, London, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Bergen, Brussels, Sydney, Johannesburg and other cities.  Currently, she is currently leading a few multi-lateral international creative producers exchange programmes supported by the British Council and European Union National Institutes for Culture.

Before moving to Manchester, Michelle was the producer of Performing Arts (Music and Outdoor) of the West Kowloon Cultural District Authority in Hong Kong. She was also part of the Cultural Olympiad and Torch Relay programming team for the Paralympics in 2012 at the Wales Millennium Centre. Other roles include positions at Hong Kong Dance Company, Theatre Noir, Live Nation/ Lushington (HK), Hong Kong International Jazz Festival and the Hong Kong Museum of Art. Michelle is a Clore and Hong Kong Advanced Cultural Leadership Fellow.

Mohamedou Ould Slahi Houbeini is an internationally acclaimed author, human rights activist, and speaker with Arab and African roots, currently based in the Netherlands.

In 2001, while living and working in Mauritania, Mohamedou was unjustly detained and rendered to Jordan, beginning a harrowing 15-year ordeal that included imprisonment in Guantánamo Bay without charge or trial. From the isolation of his cell, he authored the
globally bestselling “Guantánamo Diary,” a powerful account of his experience. The manuscript, classified for nearly eight years, was finally released with heavy redactions in 2013 and published internationally in 2015, now available in over 25 languages.

After his release on October 17, 2016, Mohamedou published the “Restored Edition” of his book in 2017, filling in the U.S. government’s redactions.

His story was adapted into the award-winning Hollywood film The Mauritanian, directed by Kevin Macdonald and starring Tahar Rahim, Jodie Foster, and Benedict Cumberbatch.

In 2021, Mohamedou published his first novel, “The Actual True Story of Ahmed and Zarga.”

Mohamedou has collaborated with NNT/NITE to co-write the theater production Yara’s Wedding, inspired by Edward Said’s Orientalism, which premiered in February 2023.

Mohamedou is a recipient of the Netherlands PAX Peace Prize  and The Marco Borradori Prize.

Nadia is a journalist, critic and pianist. She is managing editor at Coda Story and programme director at ZEG Fest. Her articles, essays and criticism appear in the Financial Times, The New Yorker, and National Geographic among many 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, will be out from WW Norton (US) and Faber & Faber (UK) in 2026.

Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah is the author of “Seeking Sexual Freedom: African Rites, Rituals, and Sankofa in the Bedroom.” Her debut, “The Sex Lives of African Women,” was an instant classic, lauded by Publishers Weekly as “an astonishing report on the quest for sexual liberation” and named a Best Book of the Year by The Economist.

Nana Darkoa is also an award winning podcaster, a festival curator, and the co-founder of the Institute of Journalism and Social Change.
Her transformative work has earned her international recognition, including a spot on the BBC's 100 inspirational and influential women list and New Africa magazine's list of 100 inspirational Africans.

Nana Dikhaminjia is advisor to the Rector for Technology Development at the University of Georgia, co-founder of the Georgia Quantum Computing Association, and Board Member of the Georgian Robotics Association. She works at the intersection of education, technology, and social change, focusing on AI, quantum education, robotics, digital transformation, innovation, and youth STEM participation.

Nana has led and supported large-scale education and technology initiatives, including Technovation Girls in Georgia, youth programs, startup development, and university–industry collaboration.

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.

Natalia (Nato) Alhazishvili is the founder of Ziari Press, a publishing house specializing in historical non-fiction and poetry. Under her leadership, Ziari Press published a celebrated new English translation of Shota Rustaveli’s epic, “The Knight in the Panther Skin,” and introduced contemporary authors on 20th-century Georgian and regional history to local audiences.

Nato currently chairs the Georgian Book Association, an organization she helped co-found in 2025. Prior to entering publishing in 2016, she had a distinguished diplomatic and development career with the United Nations, holding multiple high-level posts across Central Europe and the post-Soviet countries.

Natasha Lomouri is a Georgian literary manager and cultural organizer. As the director of the Writers’ House of Georgia between 2011 and 2023, she has played a significant role in supporting contemporary Georgian literature through international collaborations, literary residencies, festivals, and cultural initiatives.

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Natasha studied international law and political science in Georgia and Italy, and holds a PhD from Tbilisi State University. She is also the curator and concept author of the Museum of Repressed Soviet Writers. In 2023, she received a special Saba Prize for supporting the development of contemporary Georgian literary processes. Since November 2023, Natasha has been the executive director of PEN Georgia.

Nic Dawes is an advisor and commentator on media, politics and technology who has led news and human rights organizations in the United States, India and South Africa. He was editor-in-chief of the Mail & Guardian in Johannesburg, chief content officer at Hindustan Times in Delhi, executive director of THE CITY in New York and deputy executive director at Human Rights Watch. He chairs the boards of Coda Story, and South African health journalism outlet Bhekisisa. He also serves on the board of the amaBhungane Center for Investigative journalism.

Nino Bakradze is the editor-in-chief and co-founder of iFact, an independent investigative media organization in Georgia. With 15 years of journalism experience, she has contributed to major international investigations, including the Panama Papers and Pandora Papers, in partnership with OCCRP.

Nino holds a master's degree in Media Management and Journalism from GIPA, where she also taught Data Journalism for six years. She serves as a board member of Sinatle Media,  a network of 22 Georgian independent media outlets founded in 2025 to unite and strengthen independent voices facing growing legal and political pressure on civil society and free media.
A dedicated advocate for press freedom and journalistic education, Nino continues to train the next generation of investigative journalists in Georgia.

Ninutsa (Nino) Nanitashvili is a tech evangelist and ecosystem strategist dedicated to building a future where technology serves everyone. For more than a decade, she has driven initiatives centering on tech for social good— from digital accessibility, to universal internet access, peacebuilding, and the economic empowerment. Over the course of her journey, she has consulted for global giants like the ADB, World Bank, Grameen Creative Lab, USAID, Google, and the UN.
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Currently, she helps early-stage companies across EMEA leverage AI to solve humanity's toughest challenges. Ninutsa is an advocate for girls and women in tech, and the co-creator of the Grace Hopper Award. She is an LSE alumna and a Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree and jury.

Nora Mbagathi is the executive director at Katiba Institute. She holds a JD from the George Washington University Law School, an M.Sc. in Global Politics from the London School of Economics, and a B.A. in Middle Eastern Studies from the American University in Cairo.

Nora is a qualified solicitor of England and Wales and a member of the New York Bar. She has worked in human rights campaigning and strategic litigation for over ten years. Nora has participated in cases relating to digital ID, platform accountability, criminal justice, and the right to nationality in Kenya.

Prior to joining Katiba Institute, Nora was a senior lawyer with the Open Society Justice Initiative and a caseworker with the UK charity Reprieve, based in London. Nora has a background in human rights and technology, focusing on non-discrimination and equality. She serves on the board of a number of charities and organizations.

Nutsa Batiashvili is a professor of Anthropology, the dean of the Graduate School and the director of the Memory and Anxiety Research Lab at the Free University of Tbilisi.

She obtained her PhD in Anthropology from Washington University in St Louis, USA and MA and BA in Psychology from Tbilisi State University. She has been awarded postdoctoral fellowships from Oxford University School of Global and Area Studies, Oxford University Oriental Institute, Uppsala University Institute of Russian and Eurasian Studies and Washington University in St Louis.
Nutsa’s  research interests include anthropology of anxiety, collective anxiety, memory and future thinking, national narratives and identity politics.

Her book “The Bivocal Nation: Memory and Identity on the Edge of Empire”  is about a divided nation and polarized notions of nationhood. She is the editor of the special collection on the Anthropology of Anxiety published in the American Anthropologist and special issue on Memory and Anxiety in the journal of Memory, Mind, Media.

Oleksandra Matviichuk is a human rights lawyer, head of the Center for Civil Liberties that works to defend freedom and human dignity in Ukraine and the OSCE region.. She is the author of a number of reports to various UN bodies, the Council of Europe, the European Union, the OSCE and the International Criminal Court.

After the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Oleksandra, together with other partners created the ‘Tribunal for Putin’ initiative documenting  international crimes under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court in all regions of Ukraine, including the occupied territories.

In 2016 Oleksandra received the Democracy Defender Award from OSCE. In 2017 she became the first woman to participate in the Ukrainian Emerging Leaders Program of Stanford University. In 2022 Oleksandra was awarded with the Right Livelihood Award, the Sakharov Prize from the European Parliament and was  recognized as one of the 25th influential women in the world by Financial Times.

In 2022 she received the Nobel Peace Prize for the work of her organization the Center for Civil Liberties. In 2025 she received the Dutch Auschwitz Award. In 2026, Oleksandra  was named a Honourable Member of European Order of Merit by the European Parliament, an honor recognizing her significant contribution to European integration and the protection of European values.

Paata Shamugia is a Georgian poet born in Abkhazia. He served as president of PEN International Georgia between 2018 and 2022.
Paata won the SABA Georgian National Literature Prize in 2012. THe same year, his book “Acatiste” was named Best Book of the Year in Georgia.

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In 2013, he won the SABA Georgian National Literature Prize for the second time and his book “Schizo-National Poems” was named Best Book of the Year. The book also made it to the final of  the Prix Mallarmé étranger in 2022.

Paata was  on the jury for the European Union Prize for Literature.

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, and he is always keen to hear from new authors.