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Based in Silicon Valley for the past four years, Anabelle is at the heart of the ecosystem shaping the future of AI. Before becoming Commissioning Editor at Microsoft AI, she worked for IBM and Apple News, where she contributed to curation strategy and the launch of new features for the app.
She held leadership roles in the newsrooms of La Presse and Le Devoir in Canada, after beginning her career as a journalist. Her reporting has been published in France, Canada, and the United States.
Since 2024, Anabelle collaborates with WAN-IFRA on AI and media issues, notably through articles and the organisation and programming of Study Tours in Silicon Valley.
Juliette Laborie is Managing Director at JobTeaser, where she previously served as Chief Product Officer. Before joining JobTeaser, she was Chief Product Officer, Strategy and BI at Frichti.
Juliette also spent four years at Guardian News & Media in London, during a critical period when the organisation was scaling up its reader revenue strategy. There, she led digital reader revenue initiatives and strategic projects. Earlier in her career, she worked as a consultant at Boston Consulting Group in Paris.
Ana Jakimovska is Head of AI Strategy at Mediahuis, where she focuses on integrating AI into media products and operations. She previously served as CEO of Culture Trip, where she led a major transformation of the business, achieving significant cost reductions, accelerating growth, and driving the company to a successful acquisition. Ana has held senior product leadership roles at The Guardian, Sky News, BBC Worldwide, Channel 4, and ITV, building and scaling digital products across news and media.
Tim O’Rourke is Vice President, Content Strategy for Hearst Newspapers, where he leads the group’s DevHub editorial engineering and content strategy teams. Previously, O’Rourke was the director of product and strategy for The San Francisco Chronicle. He supervised the newsroom’s product, website+app, multimedia and audio staffs; directed data-driven coverage; and oversaw the development of interactive projects and journalist tools for Hearst Newspapers. O’Rourke’s former roles include being The Chronicle’s managing editor, digital; an assistant managing editor; and the executive producer of SFChronicle.com. He came to The Chronicle as the senior news editor, responsible for the print front page and news operations. He also served as the night breaking news editor and the department head for the copy and wire desks. He developed the yearlong Chronicle Covers front-page archive project and wrote the occasional craft beer story for the Food+Wine department. Before joining The Chronicle in 2013, O’Rourke worked as an editor and writer at the San Jose Mercury News, Contra Costa Times, Santa Barbara News-Press, Hartford Courant and Diablo Magazine. He has a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Oregon and a bachelor’s degree from Saint Mary’s College of California.
Robert is the CEO of AskNews, building sustainable bridges between publishers and the AI ecosystem. His background in open-source software development and research, combined with being raised by the editor-in-chief of the Rocky Mountain News, gives him a unique perspective on free speech and journalism’s invaluable position in society. He splits his time between researching data diversification, bias extraction, and fact-checking methods, and working directly with publishers to protect and monetize their content in the AI era. Beyond AskNews, Robert and his team are addressing America’s growing local news desert by building tools that help journalists rapidly surface insights from local data sources.
Juan Carlos LĂłpez Calvet is Director of Data & AI at Schibsted, where he drives the practical use of machine learning and data platforms to strengthen public-interest journalism. He leads projects on newsroom automation, verification, and responsible deployment of generative models, prioritising editorial integrity, explainability and privacy. Juan Carlos combines platform engineering and product leadership with a research-informed approach to build transparent AI tools that amplify reporting and protect trust. He has advised news organisations across Europe and beyond on AI governance, product strategy and newsroom integration. He is a frequent speaker and workshop leader on AI in media, guiding organisations toward pragmatic, accountable AI adoption.
Ezra Eeman is Strategy and Innovation Director at NPO, the Dutch Public Broadcaster, and the incoming Director of AI in Media of WAN-IFRA. Ezra writes a weekly industry newsletter, Wayfinder, about media innovation and is the author of the annual “Wayfinder Trends Report”. Previously, he served as Change Director at the international media company Mediahuis, where he was responsible for coordinating newsroom transformations and digital acceleration across a wide range of cross-media brands. Before that, Ezra was the Head of Digital at the EBU, the European Broadcasting Union, and has held positions at VRT (the Flemish public broadcaster) and VTM (the Flemish commercial broadcaster) as innovation lab head and editor-in-chief, respectively.
Kaja Distad is Head of Editorial Innovation at Polaris Media Vest and, since June 2026, AI & Innovation Driver at Polaris Media, a newly created role spanning newsrooms across Norway and Sweden. Her focus is on helping smaller local newsrooms adopt AI in practical, impactful ways.
She works on strengthening local journalism through the use of AI, automating the use of public data to make information more accessible and relevant for both journalists and readers, and developing newsroom-friendly tools, workflows and AI-powered services.
Kaja also develops real-time digital products built around local data and reporting needs, with a particular emphasis on identifying practical, high-impact solutions that smaller newsrooms can implement quickly.
Alongside her product and innovation work, she regularly leads workshops and training sessions on AI literacy, practical newsroom applications of AI, data journalism, vibe coding and agentic coding. Her approach is firmly hands-on, with the goal of making experimentation and new technologies accessible to every journalist.
Kaja began her career as a journalist at the local newspapers Askøyværingen and Vestnytt, near Bergen, Norway’s second-largest city.
Simeon is Co-Founder of Centinel Analytica, a Berlin-based company helping publishers understand, manage and control AI crawlers accessing their content. Centinel enables media organisations to identify who is scraping their websites, distinguish between different types of AI bots, and make informed decisions about access, licensing and content protection in the AI era.
Before founding Centinel Analytica, Simeon worked in venture capital and corporate law, advising companies on technology and innovation. His work today sits at the intersection of AI, publishing and digital infrastructure, helping news organisations navigate the rapidly evolving relationship between publishers, search engines and generative AI platforms.
Marit Kalgraf is the CEO of Polaris Media Vest, one of five regional divisions within the Polaris Media Group in Norway. Polaris Media Group also owns Stampen Media in Sweden. PM Vest consists of ten local newspapers. The largest newspaper has nine editorial staff, while the smallest have as few as two and three employees. The region was established just two and a half years ago, and her work focuses on creating as much value as possible through collaboration across the region. A key part of this is helping these small newspapers participate in the rapid development of AI—with its many new opportunities and risks—while also identifying effective solutions as the media industry navigates its own “Kodak moment.” She is known for her clear and decisive leadership.
Marit began her media career as a journalist at a local newspaper. From 2015 to 2023, she served as Editor-in-Chief, first at the local newspaper Vestnytt and later also at Askøyværingen, where she led the digital transformation of both publications. She has held her current role since the beginning of 2024.
Photo byline: Henrik Angermund
BenoĂ®t Georges is a newsletters journalist and artificial intelligence project manager at Les Echos. He joined Les Echos in 2000, working successively for the Lesechos.net supplement and for the Innovation section, which he headed from 2009. In 2012, he became head of the Ideas and Debates section, for which he created a weekly section devoted to foresight. In 2014, he was one of the creators of the daily newsletter 18H des Echos, for which he wrote regularly until 2019. In March 2018, he launched Les Echos’ offering on artificial intelligence, combining a web section, paper supplements and a think tank bringing together researchers and partner companies, whose first white paper was published in April 2019. From September 2019 to July 2024, he was a freelance journalist in New York for Les Echos, Les Echos Week-end and other French-language media.
Sophie Cassam ChenaĂŻÂ is Chief Digital Officer at Le Parisien, where she has been leading the newspaper’s digital transformation for seven years. She has overseen a full technical redesign of Le Parisien, including the launch of a new CMS, revamping all digital products and developing new verticals (such as Jardin, Étudiant, Jeux…) in collaboration with the newsroom. She has also expanded the digital brand to new formats — with video at the core of the strategy, alongside podcasts and newsletters — while driving growth in digital revenues through advertising, subscriptions, and diversification. Passionate about innovation, content, and user needs, she places AI at the centre of her teams’ priorities to streamline workflows, support journalists, and design original solutions for readers.
Violaine Degas is the Chief Digital Officer of Les Echos and the Theme-based division within the Les Echos Le Parisien Group (LVMH Media), which she joined in July 2021. She is responsible for digital audiences – whether anonymous, registered or subscribers – and for Product and Tech topics serving the user experience, digital subscriptions or digital advertising revenues for Les Echos, the brands in the Finance division (Investir, Boursier, Mieux Vivre Votre Argent, Capital Finance), as well as Connaissance des Arts, Radio Classique and Historia. Before that, she worked for CondĂ© Nast France for over five years as Deputy Managing Director in charge of digital and several years in digital and CRM agencies (Ogilvy, Rapp).
Virginie Clève is the founder of largow, a digital marketing consultancy. Her areas of expertise include media audience marketing, with a particular focus on Google News and Discover SEO.
She is also a member of GESTE, the French association representing online service and content publishers, where she chairs the SEO Committee.
With more than 25 years of experience in the digital ecosystem, she actively contributes to discussions around the major challenges facing France’s digital media industry, particularly those arising from artificial intelligence and the evolution of search engines.
Dmitry Shishkin is an independent media advisor who works with senior leadership teams building audience-centered organisations without losing editorial ambition or commercial discipline.
Since 2020, he has advised global media organisations including Condé Nast, Thomson Reuters Foundation, Yahoo, Globo, Ringier and others. He works with CEOs, editors-in-chief, product leaders, and boards at inflexion points: strategic reset, growth pressure, organisational misalignment, or uncertainty about how editorial, product, data, and AI should work together. His advisory focuses on newsroom transformation and multimodal content strategy.
Before co-founding Hint Media AB in 2026, Martin Schori was Deputy Managing Editor and Associate Publisher at Aftonbladet. He also led Aftonbladet’s newly established AI Hub, a cross-functional team of seven full-time employees tasked with developing, testing and implementing AI solutions across the organisation, as well as helping editorial staff use relevant AI tools.
Martin is the author of AI in the Newsroom, published in 2026.
Tom is dedicated to driving creative change in news, media, and communications. Passionate about journalism’s mission in society, he helps institutions become more agile, proactive, and sustainable.
With expertise in crafting compelling information products around new technologies, Tom excels in high-impact collaborations and data-driven business and editorial strategies.
At Fathm, Tom collaborates with global clients to forge new partnerships, launch brands and initiatives, develop newsroom AI strategies, and measure journalism’s impact.
In 2023, Tom co-founded Syli. Its flagship initiative, climateXchange, innovates climate reporting to engage and empower new audiences.
Previously, as Director of Programs at Meedan, Tom led the creation of Check Global, developing cutting-edge technologies and training for journalists, fact-checkers, and human rights researchers worldwide. He co-founded Pop-Up Newsroom, leading major initiatives to combat election misinformation globally, including the award-winning Verificado 2018.
Tom has also served as Programme Director for media sustainability and investigative reporting at the Stockholm School of Economics in Riga Centre for Media Studies. A Senior Fellow with the John Schofield Trust, he mentors early career journalists from diverse backgrounds in the UK and Ireland.
Primavera De Filippi is a Research Director at the National Center of Scientific Research in Paris, Faculty Associate at the Berkman-Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard. Her research focuses on the legal challenges and opportunities of blockchain technology and artificial intelligence. She is founding member of the Global Future Council on Blockchain Technologies at the World Economic Forum, as well as the founder and coordinator of the U.N. Internet Governance Forum’s dynamic coalition on automated legal applications (COALA).
Copyright photo: Anouck Oliveiro / Ooshot
Lucky Gunasekara is the Co-Founder and CEO of Miso.ai, where he collaborates with category leaders to create high-performance search and discovery experiences. He started their career as an Intellectual Property Analyst at Dube Technologies in 2000, where he worked on R&D and patent analysis. In 2009, Lucky co-founded and served as the Managing Director of Medic Mobile, a technology startup focused on healthcare. From 2010 to 2012, they worked as the CIO at Metabiota, where they led the initial research and development for an epidemic surveillance system. Lucky then joined the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation as an Advisor from 2012 to 2014. In 2014, they joined Cornell Tech as a Technologist in Residence, working on small data projects. Lucky also worked at Tapstack as a Senior UX Researcher and Designer from 2015 to 2016. Lucky served as a Senior Advisor, Product at Peterson Center on Healthcare from 2015 to 2017, where they contributed to developing an evidence-based model for primary care transformation.
Alice Antheaume is Executive Director of the Sciences Po School of Journalism. She is a journalist, an independent member of the Supervisory Board of Les Echos, and a member of Radio France’s committee on the honesty, independence and pluralism of news and programming.
A specialist in digital media, she began her career at TF1 and later worked as a journalist for Lemonde.fr and Télérama, before becoming a section editor and then deputy editor-in-chief at 20minutes.fr. She has also been a columnist for Slate.fr, appeared for six years on France 5’s media programme Médias, le magazine, and contributed to France Inter’s Le Nouveau Rendez-vous. Since 2013, she has served as the France correspondent for the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford for its annual Digital News Report.
Maureen Kerr covers AI, media and entertainment, focusing on the structural shifts reshaping how content is produced, distributed and monetized. Her work examines platform strategy, entertainment economics and how emerging technologies are transforming film, streaming, sports and digital media.
Kerr has written about generative AI, creator platforms, synthetic media, vertical storytelling formats and streaming consolidation. She publishes independent industry analysis on Substack at Signals & Strategies: AI, Media & Platform Economics, where she covers the intersection of media, technology and cultural change.
