CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL WINNERS!
María Elisa Botero, is an executive with more than 13 years of experience working at the intersection between technology, content and product from content and technology companies such as Meta, X (Twitter) and Caracol Televisión. Throughout her career she has distinguished herself for her ability to design and implement digital business strategies based on data analysis and knowledge of the Latin American media market, as well as for her ability to align the objectives of traditional organisations with technological opportunities.
Ignacio Zaccagnino possesses a distinguished career spanning over 17 years within the media industry. Having held prominent positions including Digital General Editor at Grupo Perfil and Head of Audiences and Strategy at TN (Grupo Clarín), his wealth of experience and expertise are widely recognized. Currently serving as a Media Manager at Nomadic, he leads a dedicated team specializing in consultancy services for media outlets across LATAM, USA, and Europe.
He studied Communication Sciences at the School of Social Sciences of the University of Buenos Aires, where he received a degree in Journalism.
He currently serves as executive director of the Asociación de Entidades Periodísticas Argentinas (ADEPA). Previously, he held the same position at the Foro de Periodismo Argentino (Fopea), was the Buenos Aires correspondent of the Los Angeles Times and was correspondent of the Instituto Prensa y Sociedad (IPYS, Peru).
He was also a member of the Press Department – Institutional Relations Department of Canal 9, editor of the Society section of the newspaper Perfil and of the supplements of the newspaper El Cronista Comercial, and editorial secretary of the magazine un Ojo Avizor en los Medios.
He also collaborated with the publications Target, Key, Grupo Siete, Cosas (Peru), Gatopardo (Mexico) and ESPN Magazine (United States).
In television he worked as Production Coordinator of the Documentary Cycle “Un Ojo TV”, produced by The Freedom Forum Foundation and broadcasted by TV Quality during 1999.
He was a university professor at UCES and is the author of a chapter on “Ethical and quality standards in digital journalism” in the book Periodismo disruptivo. Dilemmas and strategies for innovation (Editorial La Crujía, 2015).
Luciana started her career at IBM in Project Management for Latin America and then became CPO of Periódico Estadão in Brazil, leading the digital transformation of the company. She then joined Quartz as Senior Product Manager, achieving significant results such as increasing readership and creating a successful podcast. After her time at Bandeirantes Group in Brazil as Director of Product and Data, she currently serves as Media Business Advisor at MDIF. She is also Vice President of the Executive Board of the News Product Alliance.
Pioneer of the digital advertising industry in Latin America, with more than 25 years of experience in the Ad Tech ecosystem.
Currently, he is founder of The Interactive | AdTech Experts, the first consulting firm specialized in the Advertising Technology ecosystem in Latin America, where he helps agencies, advertisers and media to efficiently face the paradigm shift.
Lluís Cucarella is a journalist and CEO of the media consultancy Next Idea Media and the agency SSN Comunicación, as well as CEO & Managing Partner at JC Allman & Partners. He is also editorial director of the Journalism Laboratory of the Luca de Tena Foundation, and associate consultant at WAN-IFRA.
For more than 30 years he has held senior positions in Spanish media groups and newspapers. He has been deputy general manager of the digital area of Prensa Ibérica, director of online content, business director and director of digital transformation in numerous Spanish media, as well as director of newspapers such as Levante-EMV.
Specialized in audience development, business development and media transformation, he is also a teacher, columnist and lecturer.
With a degree in Information Sciences, he has also studied Business Administration and Management, as well as specific training at universities such as the Stephen M. Ross School of Business, (University of Michigan), among others.
Gabriela Pintos is the coordinator of Media Laboratories and Mentor at dosunos, a company whose pillars include product strategy, technology, monetization, data, business, and human capital.
Pintos was part of the Product team at Infobae. She has served as Deputy Manager at Clarín, where she was one of the responsible parties for the launch of digital subscriptions.
With 22 years of experience in digital business development, she has also worked at FOX Latin American Channels, UOL, América TV, and Editorial Perfil.
Senior Executive with training in the area of Information and Communication Technologies, with more than 35 years of professional career and more than 25 years in leadership positions. Executive Director of strategic, business, technology, innovation and digital transformation areas in the Digital Media, Telecommunications and Internet Industries, among others
Specialist in SEO, e-commerce and digital strategies. With solid experience in leading media such as Grupo Clarín, Infobae and Grupo Telefónica. He currently leads News Tech, Marktube, from the perspective of innovation and creativity.
Rodrigo Cerón is CEO of Marketerops, a consulting firm that supports media with growth strategies and analytics. He worked for almost a decade at Comscore leading the generation of marketing strategies for different international markets. In 2015, as Vice President of Advertising and Marketing at Asociación de Internet MX, he led the creation of the book “Elementos de Marketing Digital”. He is currently pursuing a PhD in Communication and Strategic Marketing at the Universidad Anahuac in Mexico, where he is researching print media consumption in the digital era.
María Jesús Espinosa de los Monteros García is Chief Audio Officer at PRISA Media and Managing Director of PRISA Audio, the new platform that brings together podcast content from all PRISA Media media outlets, both radio and press (EL PAÍS, Cinco Días, As, SER, Podium Podcast, Los40, Dial, Caracol Radio, WRadio, ADN Chile), in Spain and Latin America.
Since December 2024, she is also director of LACOproductora, PRISA MEDIA’s audiovisual production company, which is responsible for the creation and marketing of fiction, documentary and entertainment formats for television stations and platforms.
Winner of two Ondas awards, in 2019 she was elected by Forbes magazine one of the most creative minds in business. In the last five years she has been in charge of the direction of Podium Podcast, part of the offering of Prisa Radio until very recently, she is a regular contributor to EL PAÍS and co-director of the first Master’s Degree in Podcast and Digital Audio.
Noemí Ramírez is Director of Product and Digital Development at UNIR, the leading digital university in Spanish-speaking markets.
She has an extensive track record of more than 20 years of management experience in the media sector, where she has specialized in leading, executing and converging.
Journalist, specialized in Human Resources and Business Management, Natália Leal is the CEO at Lupa, the main Brazilian digital platform who tackles mis/disinformation using journalism and education. In 2021, Natália was chosen by the ICFJ to receive the Knight Award for Journalism for her work in combating misinformation. She also led the team that won the main digital journalism awards for the work on “No Epicentro”, a platform to raise awareness about the impact of Covid-19 in Brazil. With a career spanning over 15 years, she has already worked as editor and content director at Lupa, besides having worked as reporter, editor and chief reporter at other Brazilian vehicles.
Ana María Reyes, is the Digital Strategy Director at Grupo OPSA. She has led the great transformations of the media industry in Honduras.
She has more than 35 years of experience in exploring, deciphering, and learning about the digital transformation path of the world’s major media companies and how to apply it to Honduras and Central America, through technology. She has been responsible for leading the technological and digital transformation of Grupo OPSA, a leader in media in Honduras.
Journalist with 25 years in the media. Creator of Economicón, Mexico’s privacy and information society newsletter. Bachelor’s degree in Communication from Univa. Master in Transparency and Protection of Personal Data from the University of Guadalajara, with specialties in telecommunications law (IIJ-UNAM) and ICT law (ITAM).
He was editor of Público-Milenio (Guadalajara) and El Economista digital (Mexico City). He is now Media Director at Inai, Mexico’s transparency and privacy agency.
His work can be found at: https://privacidad.substack.com/ and https://economicon.mx/.
Luis Resola Alcalde is a seasoned Digital Executive with 24 years of experience in online media, digital business, and video advertising. Based in Miami, Florida, he specializes in programmatic advertising, CTV, OTT, and media migration. Luis has led teams across Latin America and Europe, having worked with Teads and Canela, focusing on strategic partnerships and publishing operations. With expertise in mobile advertising, CMS, and SEO, he also has a background in journalism and multimedia management. Luis is passionate about literature, photography, and international travel. He holds an MBA and a Master’s in Publishing and Editorial Business.
He has surfed the waves of media, technology and audience research for 30 years.
As an executive he has experienced open television, cable and digital video. As an entrepreneur, the press and performance marketing.
Today he helps companies, CEOs and boards of directors in the adoption of emerging technologies: artificial intelligence, web3 and extended reality.
Among his experiences are Nokia’s Mobile Internet Applications in Europe, Discovery research in Latin America, global responsibility for analytics at Kantar Media from London, marketing at Caracol Televisión and IBOPE measurements in the Southern Cone.
He is Italian, born in Argentina, to a Brazilian mother; husband of a Colombian and father of two daughters with multiple passports.
Yolanda Valery is an independent digital consultant currently working with brands, but born and bred in journalism. Originally a political reporter from Venezuela, Yolanda made a career with the BBC World Service, where she did many different jobs including digital media, where she participated in pioneering projects, including creating the first “mobile first” products for BBC Mundo and helping launch 11 new language services as Head of Social Media for BBC Languages.
Liz White is the Publisher, Executive Vice President and 5th generation family owner at the 155-year-old Record-Journal Media Group.
Melanie Deziel is passionate about helping individuals, teams, and organizations unlock their creative potential and organize their creative efforts. As a keynote speaker, author, and award-winning branded content creator, Melanie has spent her career developing the skills to think differently and discover new ways to engage audiences through content. She is the author of “The Content Fuel Framework: How to Generate Unlimited Story Ideas” and “Prove It: Exactly How Modern Marketers Earn Trust.”
In addition to giving keynotes, leading workshops, and coaching clients on organized creativity, Melanie is the co-founder of The Creator Kitchen mastermind for creatives.
Melanie is also the co-founder of two B2B marketplaces: The Convoy and GroupUps. Having been the first-ever editor of branded content at The New York Times, a founding member of HuffPost’s brand storytelling team, and Director of Creative Strategy for Time Inc’s 35 US magazines, Melanie brings a wealth of knowledge and experience on how content can be used as a strategic tool, and how processes can help unlock its power.
Journalist, author, consultant, professor and lecturer specialized in digital media. Author of the newsletter “Tendenci@s” on digital media, launched in 2017 and with more than 9,000 subscribers, and co-author of the newsletters “Hoy en internet” and “On the Net Today”.
He has written five books, including “La Reinvención del New York Times” (2017) and “Clarín, actualizado” (2023).
He is vice president of the Executive Board of SembraMedia, an international non-profit entity that promotes the work of entrepreneurs in digital media.
He was director of National Geographic Spain magazine (2019-2022).
He was journalist in residence at the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas at the University of Texas at Austin (academic year 2016-17).
He has held management positions in the digital business of Godó (2008-2016) and Prisa (2005-2008) groups.
Selymar Colón is an award-winning journalist and the Managing Director of Platea Media in Puerto Rico. A digital media leader, she previously served as Executive Director for Digital at GFR Media, where she led digital editorial and reader revenue strategies for El Nuevo Día and Primera Hora. A pioneer in newsroom innovation, Colón was instrumental in integrating social media and digital video into traditional newsrooms, building multimedia teams that bridged broadcast and digital. In 2022, she joined the Board of Advisors. for the Center for Media Integrity of the Americas, contributing her expertise in trustworthy journalism and digital transformation.
Josyette is Co-founder and managing director of Tempo Media, full-service creative content development and production business team, focused on creating and show-running original IP, Fiction & Non-fiction, for TV and Media Platforms, concentrated on the US Hispanic and LATAM market, with established production operations in 2 countries.
A pioneer in the digital transformation of journalistic archives, this communicator with over 40 years of experience has led the preservation and digitization of the historical archive of El Comercio (1839, Peru), from 1839 to 2012, a legacy dating back to 1839. Through ECloud, her company, she has transformed decades of information into profitable digital assets, opening new markets and generating sustainable income for media through content licensing and the development of artificial intelligence applications. Her leadership extends to her participation in the Editorial Advisory Board of El Comercio, the Inter American Press Association, where she currently holds the position of Regional Vice President for Peru of the Freedom of Press and Information Commission, and the Latin American Advisory Committee of WAN-INFRA (2014-2019).
She is the author of “Unos días con Bobby”, a children’s story explaining the disease of cancer, which explores grief through the lens of childhood fantasy, and “Renacer: Resignificación del duelo” (2024) and co-author of two books: Derribando Muros. Periodismo 3.0: Oferta y Demanda de Comunicación en el Perú de Hoy (2017) and Lecciones de Gestión de Talento en el Perú (2022).
David Sancha is Chief Information Officer of hiberus Media Labs. Journalist and consultant with more than 20 years of experience in media, he has collaborated in the definition and implementation of digital transformation projects in more than 50 media groups in Europe and Latin America. He is the founder of Xalok, the CMS with the largest implementation in Spanish-speaking media, and is promoting Assistant, a module for the integration of generative AI solutions in newsrooms.
Passionate about digital marketing and continuous learning. She has more than 10 years of experience in the industry, where she has had the opportunity to develop her leadership, team management and negotiation skills to achieve and exceed objectives, providing exceptional service and building lasting relationships based on trust and satisfaction.
Throughout his career, he has stood out for his ability to find business opportunities, optimize processes, assist in product development and maximize the benefits of the companies in which he has had the fortune to collaborate.
She began her professional career in media companies such as Imagen Digital and TV Azteca and later made the leap to technology platforms such as Seedtag and currently leads the Acquisitions and Strategic Alliances Development team at MGID for Latin America.
She has been speaker and moderator at WAN-IFRA’s Digital Media LATAM.
Ana is Chief Digital Officer (CDO) at Prisa Radio, the world’s biggest Spanish-language audio production company. In Prisa Radio she leads the Audio first product strategy for 30 brands in 4 different countries (Spain, Colombia, Chile and Mexico) with brands such as Cadena SER, los40, Caracol Radio, WRadio.
Summer Harlow (Ph.D., journalism) is the associate director of the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas and a visiting associate professor at the University of Texas at Austin. A former journalist, her research examines the challenges and opportunities for alternative media, independent journalism, and activism brought on by emerging technologies, particularly in Latin America and the Global South. She has written two books: Digital Native News and the Remaking of Latin American Mainstream and Alternative Journalism (Routledge, 2023), which won the Kappa Tau Alpha Frank Luther Mott book award for best journalism and mass communication research and the AEJMC-Knudson Latin America book prize, and Liberation Technology in El Salvador: Re-appropriating Social Media among Alternative Media Projects (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2017), which also won the Knudson prize. She also edited the ebook Content Creators and Journalists: Redefining News and Credibility in the Digital Age, which the Knight Center published in 2024.
Her research has been published in top peer-reviewed journals such as the Journal of Communication, International Journal of Press/Politics, New Media & Society, Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, and Digital Journalism. Currently, she is the primary investigator for El Salvador in the Worlds of Journalism Study and the Journalistic Role Performance Project. She also is an associate editor for the Journalism Studies journal.
Peruvian journalist. Executive director of Consejo de la Prensa Peruana, the leading media association of Peru. His articles, chronicles, interviews and opinion pieces have been published in outlets such as El Comercio, La República, Ojo Público, Epicentro, Caretas and El Búho. Former general editor of magazine Semana Económica.
He has a masters in global media communication from the University of Melbourne, Australia. For over a decade, Rodrigo has taught journalism classes in local universities Universidad Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas and Universidad Científica del Sur. Author of the short stories collection De nada sirve que prendas la luz and the novel El silencio desde la distancia.
Journalist and project management specialist. He currently leads Page Performance Consulting, a program part of the Mexico News Accelerator of the Google News Initiative in collaboration with Marktube Group, designed to improve the technical performance of the media in Mexico.
His career spans Project and Product Management, SEO, Marketing and Editorial Consulting, always with a focus on developing strategies to drive digital transformation. He has collaborated for more than a decade in several initiatives to improve the media ecosystem mainly in Latin America.
Javier Garza Ramos is a journalist based in Torreón (northern Mexico). He is co-host of El Noti, one of the most listened news podcasts in the country and runs Horizonte Lagunero, a local news platform on radio and social networks.
With a career of more than 25 years, he was editorial director of El Siglo de Torreón during the toughest years of narco-violence in the states of Coahuila and Durango. He has been a reporter and editor at Reforma newspaper in Mexico City. He was a Knight Fellow at the International Center for Journalists and has collaborated with the World Association of News Editors and the Inter American Press Association in training journalists in various parts of the world. He is a regular contributor to the newspaper El País and the news portal Latinus.
He is the author of the book “Nueve Disparos”, an in-depth report on a shooting at the Cervantes School in Torreón in January 2020, and co-author of “Reconquistando La Laguna”, a study on the recovery of security in the Comarca Lagunera. He serves on the boards of several international organizations such as the World Editors Forum, Artículo19, the Fund for Journalism and Trauma.
In 2022 he received the Maria Moors Cabot Award for journalism in the Americas granted by Columbia University.
He is a graduate of the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City and the University of Texas at Austin.
Elizabeth is currently Deputy Technical Director of IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau) Colombia. Senior executive, given her expertise, knowledge and training as a systems engineer, telecommunications specialist and master in marketing.
With more than 35 years of experience, of which for 25 years she was in charge of the technological, innovation and digital strategies of the newspaper La Patria de Colombia; today columnist of this media.
With 18 years in the digital industry, 11 years in university teaching in undergraduate and graduate courses on topics associated with marketing, advertising and digital journalism. Business consultant and mentor.
Digital strategist and senior executive with over 18 years of experience in digital transformation, business development and audience growth. She has worked at the intersection of technology and content development, driving the evolution of the digital ecosystem in Latin America.
She is co-founder of Oceana Media Lab, a firm specializing in consulting and training with projects in more than nine markets. She is also Executive Director of Alianza de Medios Mx and collaborates with the News tech Marktube Group, where she leads acceleration programs for media in Latin America with the support of the Google News Initiative.
At Meta, she held the role of Strategic Partner Manager, managing key alliances and developing strategies that impacted more than 150 media outlets in the region, driving revenue growth and digital product adoption. Previously, as CDO at El Financiero, she led the digital transformation of the media, achieving a 40% YoY audience growth and consolidating new monetization sources.
Her career also includes roles at Yahoo and Grupo Reforma, consolidating her expertise in digital content, engagement and business models. She has been speaker and jury in international forums and events.
Member of the National System of Researchers, Level 1.
Research Professor at the School of Communication of the Universidad Panamericana and at the Facultad de Estudios Superiores Aragón-UNAM.
PhD in Information Sciences from the Complutense University of Madrid. He holds a Master’s Degree in Social Communication from the Universidad Panamericana, a Diploma in Artificial Intelligence Tools for Social Research from the International Center for Interdisciplinary Studies, a Diploma in Digital Journalism from the University of the Basque Country (Spain) and a Diploma in Social Research Methodology from the UNAM. He is a graduate of the Carlos Septién García School of Journalism.
Expert in strategic planning with management teams as strategic liaison, with more than 19 years of experience as a specialist in project management, continuous improvement, business transformation and information analyst for the creation of indicators that serve as a compass for business growth in different industries.
With extensive knowledge of the digital ecosystem, trends in the publishing industry and its dynamics, as well as the challenges for the creation of multiplatform content and the optimization of the user experience in digital environments.