A seasoned TV journalist in her native Canada, and with 30 years’ experience as an actor, Pat Rodriguez knows all about performing under pressure. She  brings all that experience to her performance coaching, helping clients to be more agile, confident and inspiring. Pat has coached at London Business School’s Women in Leadership Programme, at University of the Arts London, Speakers Lab for Washington DC’s 15 Minutes Group, with science entrepreneurs at ETH Zurich, and at SXSW London.

Phil Chetwynd is the Global News Director of Agence France-Presse (AFP). He leads a newsroom of 1,700 journalists based in over 150 countries. Phil has been responsible for AFP's editorial strategy prioritizing on-the-ground human storytelling in multimedia formats, the development of a world-class video service and an award-winning pivot on climate coverage. He has also made AFP a leading voice in the battle against disinformation.
During a long career at AFP, Phil occupied the posts of Global Editor-in-Chief and Chief Asia Editor. He was also a foreign correspondent working in Asia and the Middle East. He began his career in British newspapers. He sits on the World Editors Forum and the board of Reporters Without Borders.

Rachel Corp is a journalist, media CEO and Chair of Women in Journalism in the UK. Most recently she was CEO of ITN, one of the UK’s largest independent production companies which creates 70+ hours of live programming each week and 1 billion digital views a month. ITN produces Emmy and BAFTA winning news for the UK’s commercial public service broadcasters ITV, Channel 4 and Five, as well as programmes and content for global streamers, international broadcasters and digital platforms. Prior to CEO Rachel was Editor of ITV News where she led the team behind celebrated exclusive and original reporting in the UK and globally. She worked for many years in the field in the UK and globally and speaks regularly on the importance of public service media, impartial fact based storytelling and responsible AI use.

Rachel Shabi is an award-winning journalist, who has reported extensively on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Now based in the UK, she covers current affairs, with her work appearing across international publications, including The Guardian, The New York Times, the London Times, The Nation and the New York Review of Books.

Her first book, “Not the Enemy: Israel’s Jews from Arab Lands” received the US National Jewish Book Award. Her latest book, “Off White: The Truth About Antisemitism”, has received widespread acclaim. Journalist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown praises Rachel's “unique sensibility, embodying multiple identities and universal, non-negotiable human rights.”

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, 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 Prix Pictet award in Photography and Sustainability.

Rena spoke at the World Economic Forum in Davos twice and is a member of its Cultural Leadership network. Her work has been exhibited at the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Saatchi Gallery, İstanbul Modern, Venice Biennial and NYC MOMA. Rena Effendi is a National Geographic Explorer and a frequent contributor to the National Geographic Magazine.

Richard Addy is a strategy, audience, communications and impact expert, with over 30 years of experience advising organizational leaders. He is the co-founder of AKAS, a multi-award-winning audience strategy consultancy that has advised 100+ clients, including BBC News/World Service, The Guardian, Channel 4 News, Thomson Reuters Foundation, OSF and Luminate.

Previously, Richard was the Chief Adviser to the BBC's Deputy Director General, who led BBC journalism. He is currently on the boards of theguardian.org and Africa No Filter and was previously on the boards of Mind, USC Annenberg's Media Impact Project and the BBC Journalism Group.

Arcy (Rosmery De la Cruz Suazo) is a Geneva-based queer Afrolatina educator, standup comic, and author. Born in the Dominican Republic, she is the creator of LUCY33 — the world's first femicide aftermath educational framework, built from 33 years of lived experience and 14 years of field practice training over 2,500 practitioners across three continents.

She performs at the intersection of human rights and comedy — because grief and laughter have always lived in the same chest, and silence has never been a survival strategy.

She is currently writing her first book, "Built to Failed" — a memoir of femicide aftermath, 33 years in the making.

Rvd Rusudan Gotsiridze is a bishop of the Evangelical Baptist Church of Georgia, the first woman in Georgia to be consecrated as a bishop and a longtime researcher of women’s ordination practices in different Christian traditions. She holds a master’s degree in Christian Theology and reads ‘Gender Egalitarianism in Christian Traditions’ at Ilia State University.

Bishop Rusudan is a gender expert, researcher and trainer. She has advocated against domestic violence, for women's equality and LGBTQ rights. She has been a supporter of religious liberty in Georgia. She has been a speaker at the United Nations 6th Forum on Minority Issues, as well as  at regional conferences on contemporary challenges to religious freedom.
She participated in a meeting of the UN Human Rights Division in Poland in 2017; and spoke at a UN webinar on COVID‐19 challenges and religious institutions in 2020.

In addition to her ministry and advocacy, Bishop Rusudan is an accomplished watercolor artist whose work celebrates religious diversity in Georgian culture. In 2023, she created a series of paintings for the Yezidi Museum in Tbilisi. In 2024, she completed a project for the Catholic Cathedral in Tbilisi, combining Georgian calligraphy and watercolor now installed on the cathedral ceiling.

Through both her ministry and her art, she  continues to be a powerful advocate for justice, compassion, and inclusive community building in Georgia and beyond. She was granted a 2014 International Women of Courage Award handed by Mrs. Michelle Obama and received the Order of Honor by the President of Georgia.

Sahar Dowlatshahi is a Paris-based Iranian translator of Farsi/Persian to and from English and Spanish, and from French and Italian. She has translated a number of fiction and non-fiction books and regularly works with major media organizations. She is about to launch a platform for translated Iranian literature, “Peacock Tales.”

Dr. Seema Jilani is an Assistant Professor of Pediatric Hospitalist Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children's Hospital, where she trained. Her humanitarian aid work has taken her to Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Egypt, Bosnia, Ukraine, Gaza and the West Bank over the past 20 years. She has treated migrants on board refugee rescue ships in the Mediterranean Sea, critically ill children on board medical evacuation flights, and responded on the scene after the 2020 explosion in the Port of Beirut, Lebanon. She was selected by the U.S. State Department as a Senior Fulbright Scholar to Istanbul, where she designed a curriculum for medical students on how to engage in media advocacy. Dr. Jilani has briefed the United Nations Security Council, the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Senior Officials at The White House and National Security Council. She is a Member of the Council on Foreign Relations and her work has been featured in The New York Times, NPR, PBS NewsHour, The New Yorker, GQ Heroes, and The Guardian.

Serhii Korovayny is a Ukrainian photojournalist whose work focuses on war, displacement, environmental issues, and the long-term human consequences of conflict. Born and raised in Donbas, he is currently documenting the Russian-Ukrainian war with a particular focus on the relationship between memory, place, and survival.

Serhii is a frequent contributor to The Wall Street Journal and has also worked with TIME, The Washington Post, Der Spiegel, The Guardian, and the Financial Times.

His deeply personal long-term project “Love Letters to Donbas,” published by FotoEvidence and the Ukrainian Association of Professional Photographers reflects on the transformation of his homeland under war and occupation through photographs, archival material, and personal writing. The book was produced as part of the FotoEvidence Ukraine Initiative.

As a Fulbright Scholar, Serhii earned an MA in Photography from Syracuse University in New York. In 2022, he received the James Foley Award for Conflict Reporting. He participated in the World Press Photo Joop Swart Masterclass in 2024, and in 2025 his work received awards from Pictures of the Year International and the National Press Photographers Association.

Şerife Wong is a Turkish-Kānaka Maoli artist and the founder of Icarus Salon, a conceptual art organization at the intersection of politics and technology. Her practice focuses on the narratives surrounding AI and power, and has been recognized with fellowships and awards from Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center, Berggruen Institute, Mozilla Foundation, Creative Capital, and Salzburg Global.

Şerife is the chairman of OCEAN, working on algorithmic accountability in the public interest. She serves as an affiliate research scientist at UC Berkeley’s Kidd Lab, an affiliate of O'Neil Risk Consulting and Algorithmic Auditing, and on the boards of Gray Area and Tech Inquiry. She is a frequent collaborator with Stanford University's Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences and was previously an editor at Artnet Magazine. She is a member of the San Francisco art and DJ collective Brass Tax.

Shahmir Sanni is a digital content strategist who, in March 2016, came forward with evidence that led to the biggest electoral scandal of modern Britain. His revelations uncovered that a Cambridge Analytica off-shoot, AIQ, was used by the official Leave campaign to cheat during the referendum. Some of those implicated include cabinet ministers like Boris Johnson and Theresa May’s senior advisors. When the scandal was unearthed, Downing Street used their press office to out Sanni as a gay man. He came out to his family the same day, while his workplace fired him. Sanni eventually won his lawsuit against his employer and continued to expose the corruption and inner workings of the Conservative establishment until he moved back to Pakistan to work with the LGBTQ community in the region.

Shelley Thakral is a ZEG veteran and a natural storyteller. For 16 years she was a BBC journalist, reporting from North America, the Middle East, and South Asia. Today she works in humanitarian response — helping deliver food and cash assistance to thousands of people displaced by war and climate change. She’s currently based in Rakhine, Myanmar. Shelley is also a board trustee at One World Media, where she champions press freedom and supports journalists around the world.

Simon Allison is the co-founder and International Editor of The Continent, Africa's most widely distributed newspaper; and serves on the board of the International Press Institute.

‍

Simon Janashia has been working in education in various capacities for more than 25 years, as a professor, scholar, teacher, senior civil servant, and consultant In Georgia and abroad. He received his doctoral degree at Columbia Teachers College and earned his MA degree from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

‍
Simon is a founding teacher of The Guivy Zaldastanishvili American Academy in Tbilisi He is also a founding member of the Georgian political party “Freedom Square.”

Simon Schellevis is the creator of THE BODYMIND KEY. Through lifelong immersive practice and research into meditation, movement, breath, nervous system regulation, internal martial arts, and human performance, he developed a radically different approach to human transformation based on one central principle: Stillness First.

As the writer of “Falling in Place,” to be released in 2026, Simon introduces The BODYMIND Key as a practical method for upgrading the human system through advanced calibration to Gravity. His work bridges ancient wisdom and modern understanding, translating deep embodied principles into clear, repeatable tools for everyday life, performance, recovery, and personal evolution.

Known for his grounded yet unconventional approach, Simon’s work focuses on reducing internal resistance, increasing operational capacity, and helping people transform pain into power through direct embodied experience rather than theory alone.

Sophio Ebralidze is the co-founder of the cultural platform MECHANICAL WAVES. With over 15 years of experience in communications and management, her portfolio
includes key projects with the Tbilisi Open Air festival and club KHIDI. She is a member of the current cohort for both the Keychange Talent Leadership Programme
and the Global Creative Producers Programme. A Tbilisi local, Sophio is a proud mother to her son and three dogs.

Stefan Turkheimer is vice president for public policy for RAINN, the largest anti sexual violence organization in the United States.

He leads a team of advocates who are known for their “never say die” attitude and unparalleled effectiveness in the United States Congress, as well as state capitols across the country.

He is an attorney with over 20 years of legal experience, first as a prosecutor and then as an employment attorney. He has tried cases at nearly every level, both criminal and civil, and in state and federal court. Stefan has worked for United States Senators, Members of Congress, State Senators, and State Representatives.

He’s managed campaigns, consulted to state caucuses, and won awards for his political advertising, and most recently was deputy political director to Elizabeth Warren on her presidential campaign.

Stephen M. Kohn, founding partner of Kohn, Kohn & Colapinto and Chairman of the Board of the National Whistleblower Center, has over 40 years of experience representing whistleblowers. In 2024 and 2025, Forbes magazine named him one of America’s Top 200 Lawyers.

Stephen won the first $100 million whistleblower award for UBS Swiss Banker Bradley Birkenfeld who successfully exposed 18,000 illegal offshore accounts, and currently represents the Danske Bank whistleblower who reported and stopped the largest known money-laundering scandal.

Stephen has helped draft key transnational whistleblower laws, and is currently both litigating cases and attempting to implement regulatory changes to increase the rights of journalists under whistleblower laws. He is the world’s most published author on whistleblower protection, including “Rules for Whistleblowers: A Handbook for Doing What’s Right.”

Tamriko Kordzaia is a Georgian-Swiss pianist. She was primarily known as a Haydn and Mozart interpreter before switching to more contemporary music in Switzerland. She frequently collaborates with musicians from electronic club music, experimental music and jazz-related contexts. She also seeks connections to other artistic disciplines and fields.

Tamriko is the director of the Close Encounters festival, a biennial festival of contemporary music  in Georgia and Switzerland. She also serves as a member of the curatorial board of the Musikfestival Bern.

Tamriko teaches at the Zurich Academy of Arts. She has received numerous national and international awards, including first prize and the prize for Mozart interpretation at the International Sakai Competition in Japan and the Cultural Promotion Prize of the City of Winterthur.

Tamta Melashvili is a writer and researcher. Her fearless work has earned her some of the important awards, including Georgian Saba Prize and German Youth Literature Prize. Her work has been translated into multiple languages. Tamta’s  latest novel, “Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry” was adapted into a feature film, premiered at Cannes Festival in 2023.
‍

Beyond literature, she has been active in academia and civil activism.

Tara McDonald is a UK-based psychotherapist, play therapist and clinical supervisor with a passion for supporting children, adolescents and the systems around them. She spent 10 years in Thailand, working with children, families and communities within a child and adolescent mental health setting. She also founded a network delivering infant mental health training to social workers and NGOs.

Tara’s work is rooted in the understanding that our stories live not only in the mind, but in the body and are carried through our nervous system, relationships and history. She creates space for these stories to be safely held, explored and gently integrated.

Alongside her private practice, Tara trains and supervises therapists, with a focus on family systems and relational trauma. She is the co-author of “A Polyvagal Informed Approach to Therapeutic Work with Children and Young People.’

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.

Thomas Dworzak is a German photographer and member of the photo agency Magnum Photos. In the early 1990s, he started photographing mainly in the Caucasus and has since been documenting conflicts in the Balkans, the Middle East and Africa.

Thomas has regularly contributed to The New Yorker, Time Magazine, National Geographic and many others and has published several books.

Tina Mamulashvili is a partner and the managing director of Sulakauri Publishing, one of the leading publishing houses in Georgia. The company represents the rights of over 30 prominent Georgian authors — both contemporary and classical — many of whom have been nominated for prestigious prizes and awarded significant literary honors in Georgia and abroad.

‍
Tina Mamulashvili began her career in publishing in 1996 as an editor and project manager at Diogene Publishers in Georgia. Since 1999, she has participated in major international book fairs, including Frankfurt, Bologna, London, Istanbul, and Gothenburg. From the very beginning of her career, she was actively engaged in organizing local book festivals and played a key role in coordinating the Georgian collective stand at the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2007.

‍
Tina graduated from the UCLA–NUS Executive MBA program in 2014. In May 2015, together with a colleague, she  co-founded the NGO Georgian Book Institute, which carries out several educational projects annually. She also oversees the Santa Esperanza bookstore chain, with six independent bookstores.

‍
Tina is a chairperson of theEuropean Educational Publishers’ Group board and  Board member of Georgian Book Association.

Vakhtang Kebuladze is a  philosopher, publicist and translator. He serves as full professor at Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv and associate professor at National University of «Kyiv-Mohyla Academy.»

Vakhtang is the prize-winner of Ukrainian PEN International in 2016, member of the board of Ukrainian Philosophical Foundation, co-chairman of Ukrainian Phenomenological Society, chairman of the editorial board of the book series “Library of Classical World Academic Thought”  and member of Ukrainian PEN International.

He is also a member of the editorial board of Philosophical Thought Journal in Ukraine, the academic council of LIBRI VIRIDES book series in Germany and the  academic council of The Interlocutor Journal in Poland.

Vakhtang sits on the board of the international organization “Central and East European Society for Phenomenology.” He is the author of numerous books and publications in Ukrainian, German and Polish. Vakhtang’s works include “Phenomenology of Experience” and “Meshes of Fate.”

Viet Thanh Nguyen is the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “The Sympathizer,” as well as its sequel, “The Committed.” His nonfiction works include “Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War,” winner of the René Wellek Prize and shortlisted for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award; “A Man of Two Faces: A Memoir, A History, A Memorial,” shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize; and “To Save and to Destroy: Writing as an Other,” shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award.

He has also written for children, with “Chicken of the Sea” and “Simone.” A recipient of MacArthur and Guggenheim Fellowships, he has been an advocate for refugees, from his bestselling short story collection “The Refugees” to an edited book, “The Displaced: Refugee Writers on Refugee Lives.”

Viola Stefanello is a Milan-based journalist who makes sense of the internet for people who live on it — and people who don't.
Writing for Italy's Il Post, she explores everything from fandom culture to online radicalization.

Over the past decade, Viola covered memes, politics, and digital subcultures for Wired, Rolling Stone, Internazionale, and the Daily Dot, developing a reputation for finding the human stories behind the screenshots. She also co-organizes events about the internet and pop culture, because sometimes you need to log off to laugh about being online.

Dr. Volodymyr Yermolenko is a Ukrainian philosopher, journalist and writer. President of PEN Ukraine. He is a Doctor of political studies, has a PhD in philosophy and serves as chief editor of UkraineWorld.org, a multimedia project in English about Ukraine run by Internews Ukraine.

Volodymir is a  professor at Kyiv-Mohyla Academy and has written fiction and non-fiction. He won the Myroslav Popovych and Petro Mohyla Prizes in 2021 and the Yurii Sheveliov Prize in 2018. He’s also a three-time winner of the Book of the Year prize in Ukraine.

Volodymyr serves as head of the board of the International Renaissance Foundation and is a public lecturer. He’s the author of podcasts “Explaining Ukraine” and “Thinking in Dark Times” and co-author  of “Kultpodcast.”

Author of numerous articles in international and Ukrainian media, Volodymyr has been featured in The Economist, Le Monde, Financial Times, New York Times,  Newsweek, BBC, CNN, Al Jazeera, France 24 and other outlets. His texts and interviews have been published in Ukrainian, English, French, German, Spanish, Polish, Italian, Russian, Dutch, Norwegian, Czech, Greek, Chinese and other languages.

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, and won the National Press Club Award for political analysis, two Overseas Press Club Awards, as well as the Washington Institute Gold Medal for the best book on the Middle East. His latest non-fiction book, “Our Enemies Will Vanish,” was a finalist of the 2024 Orwell Prize and won the 2024 Peterson Literary Prize.

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.

Zelda Perkins was the first woman to break a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) — signed decades earlier — with Harvey Weinstein in 2017. She brought the systematic abuse of NDAs to the attention of the British Government and international press, giving evidence at two parliamentary inquiries, which uncovered an epidemic of misuse, and pushed the Solicitors Regulatory Authority to take disciplinary action against the lawyer who created the NDAs for Weinstein. Her actions have inspired others to come forward by her example.

Zelda has been campaigning for legislative and regulatory reform in the UK since 2017 and launched the campaign Can’t Buy My Silence UK in 2021. The campaign has worked with governments in the UK, Ireland and across Canada
and Australia, achieving successful legislative reforms in three countries. The most significant reforms being in the UK with amendments to the Employment Rights Act 2025, Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act, Victims and Prisoners Act and the Victims and Courts Bill, which will together make NDAs void if used to silence victims or witnesses of harassment, discrimination, or crime. Her work has also helped implement significant re- evaluation by the legal sector around ethical practice and confidentiality.

Zelda has won multiple awards including Person of the Year by Time Magazine in 2018, Outstanding Contribution to Gender Equality by UN Women UK in 2023 and was made a Commander of the British Empire (CBE) for services to social justice in 2025. Her character was portrayed by Samantha Morton in the Universal Pictures feature “She Said”, documenting her part in the downfall of Weinstein.

Zsuzsanna Lippai is the chief executive officer of The Fuller Project, a global nonprofit newsroom dedicated to journalism that catalyzes change for women. She leads the organization's strategic vision, business operations, and partnerships to amplify stories that hold power accountable and drive change.

‍
For nearly two decades, Zsuzsanna has worked at the intersection of journalism, human rights, and democratic governance. Her career spans the Open Society Foundations, where she stewarded a $100M gender equality commitment and directed strategy for global human rights work; the Institute for Inclusive Security, where she advised governments on women's participation in peace and security; and roles across media, philanthropy, and civil society in multiple continents.
‍

A Hungarian-American with deep experience in closing civic spaces, Zsuzsanna’s work demonstrates that independent journalism serves as documentation and witness when democratic institutions weaken — creating the evidence necessary for accountability.

Zura (Zurriuss) Balanchivadze is a tour guide with experience in journalism. He specializes  in historical and informative tours mixed with fun elements, details others might miss and the sense of exploration during the tours.

Zura also researches Soviet history and street art in Tbilisi and beyond.