Newsroom Summit 2022

Paul Adepoju joined the ICFJ as a Forum Manager to help fellow journalists hone heath crisis reporting skills. He is a contributing reporter, academic, and author. He covers health and tech in Africa for leading local and international media outlets including CNN, Quartz, and The Guardian. He’s also the founder of healthnews.africa. He is completing a doctorate in cell biology and genetics and holds several reporting awards in health and tech.

Catalina Albeanu is a digital editor passionate about developing interdisciplinary editorial projects. She’s currently working on setting up a directory of journalism networks in Europe as part of the European Excellence Exchange in Journalism (E3J) project. Previously she was digital editor at DoR, a non-profit independent media focused on narrative storytelling in Romania, and media reporter and events manager at Journalism.co.uk.

Andreas is currently Director of Organization at Verdens Gang (VG) in Norway. He is also the leader of VG’s emergency preparedness work related to the corona pandemic. Andreas is a journalist since 1994 and has since then had various journalistic tasks and management tasks in Romerikes Blad, Aftenposten and VG. He also has some radio experience from his youth.

Gabriela is co-founder of AC2ALITY- Spain’s media startup that has become Europe’s biggest news producer on TikTok.

Jeremy is a certified executive-level coach and founder of Chrysalis Transformations – a training, coaching and leadership consultancy for leaders and managers.

John Crowley is an editor, trainer and consultant with 25 years of journalistic experience managing newsrooms and budgets across a variety of titles. After taking on digital and leadership roles for The Daily Telegraph, The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek and The Irish Post, he now writes across subjects including technology, business, newsroom management, sustainability, mental health and wellbeing. John has a strong track record in digital innovation and audience insights, reacting to the varied ways people now consume news. In his consultancy role, he advises companies on the ever-changing digital media landscape and how PRs can pitch journalists.

At the end of 2020, he co-published a report into wellbeing entitled ‘Journalism in the Time of Covid’. As a result he was asked to train journalists in the US and UK. John is a trained mental health first aider with MHFA England. He has co-developed a journalism wellbeing programme for Headlines Network with journalist colleague Hannah Storm in late 2021. They have published a suite of mental health resources for journalists in 2022, working with the charity Mind, and have started a new podcast called Behind the Headlines.

Walid is currently the Head of Editorial Content for Emerging and Frontier Markets Publications for Refinitiv, a London Stock Exchange Group company. Walid is also Managing Editor for news website Zawya.com, which was acquired by Thomson Reuters in 2012 when he first joined as deputy editor. Walid has worked on multiple products during his tenure at Tomson Reuters, including launching several business portals and establishing a white label knowledge solutions content business for Zawya and Refinitiv.

Professor Suzanne Franks was appointed to a chair in Journalism at City University London in 2012 and until 2016 she was director of the undergraduate programme. She supervises PhD students and contributes to the research output in Journalism. She was PI in an EU Horizon 2020 consortium on improving the reporting of science and she led an impact case study on female expertise in news broadcasting. She received two GCRF grants linked to these projects, one investigating the role of women experts in Ghana and the other researching science journalism in South Africa.

Emily Goligoski acts as an advocate for news consumers and delivers actionable insights to media organizations. Emily is the executive director of audience research at The Atlantic. She previously served as research director for the Membership Puzzle Project at New York University after working as a user experience researcher at The New York Times. Emily completed her Master’s in Learning, Design & Technology at Stanford. She previously worked at Chicago Public Radio (WBEZ) and studied journalism at Northwestern. Emily has written for The Guardian, Columbia Journalism Review, and other sites that produce coverage worth paying for.

Passionate about new media, interactive storytelling and reporting projects. Jakub studied journalism at Warsaw University, specialised in Reportage Laboratory. He started Outriders to bridge cultures and societies by original reporting and providing a global perspective through innovative storytelling. As a COO and board member of ePaństwo Foundation, he developed it into a global leading open data/transparency NGO. He started Code for Poland, worked there for six years and transformed it into Code for All together with Code for America. He also co-operated with Open Cities – a program helping European cities adopt open data policies as well as Personal Democracy Forum in CEE and TransparenCEE. He remains an active ambassador of Central Eastern Europe. Jakub was named a 2014 New Europe Challenger.

Timo Grossenbacher is a team lead for automated journalism at Swiss publisher Tamedia. Prior to that, he used to be a data journalist working with the Swiss Public Broadcast (SRF) and won several renowned awards for his work. He studied Geography and Computer Science at the University of Zurich and completed an advanced diploma in data science.

Fredric Karen is an accomplished journalist with over 30 years of journalistic and business experience. He began as a reporter at local papers and later worked as a sub-editor at local/regional papers. He then joined Aftonbladet, Sweden’s largest tabloid, as a reporter. Karen served as a news editor at the Swedish News Agency (TT) before transitioning to digital editor and later editor-in-chief at Svenska Dagbladet. He also held senior editorial positions at the Toronto Star and currently serves as Senior Vice President of Editorial Transformation at Schibsted. He graduaged from Klaralvdalens fhs. Karen’s extensive career showcases his expertise and adaptability in the evolving media landscape.

The team at Factiverse automate detection of fake news with cutting-edge AI and NLP. Together with journalists, media outlets and tech they are developing products and services that helps users distinct fact from fiction online.

Gaute Kokkvoll is one of Norway’s leading experts in gamification. He has extensive experience in Gamification and has worked on several national and international projects. In 2016, he started working for The Octalysis Group, a company that is a world leader in gamification and “motivational design”. Gaute has always had a burning commitment to education and learning and since 2017 he has taught Gamification at Westerdals in Oslo and Kristiania University College. Gaute has a Bachelor in Creativity, Innovation and Business Development from Kristiania University College, and has since 2015 been involved in several Norwegian start-ups, including Bidra.no which is one of the country’s largest platforms for crowdfunding and financing of good causes.

Tanya Lewis is Senior Editor covering health and medicine at Scientific American. Previously, she worked as assistant news editor at Scientific American, a news writer for the Scientist, a staff writer at Business Insider and a science reporter at Live Science, where she covered a wide range of subjects with a focus on biomedical science, neuroscience and technology. She has also written for Science News and Wired. She holds a graduate degree in science communication from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and a B.S. in biomedical engineering from Brown University.

Markku Mantila is Editor-in-Chief of I-Mediat in the Finnish city of Oulu. Markku has a long and successful career in journalism, communications and diplomacy. Mantila’s career as a journalist began in Ilkka magazine in 1985 and continued in Turku Sanomat before joining the Ministry for Foreign Affairs. Mantila worked as the editor-in-chief in Pohjalainen and in Kaleva. In addition, he was the Director of Communications for the Government. He has a Master’s degree in politics from the University of Turku and the London School of Economics.

Alberto has spent the last 25 years in the media industry, taking care of content creation, distribution and monetization. A master’s degree in philosophy followed by an experience in the publishing industry as an editor kicked-off a career focused on the digital space. In large multinational organizations – such as Microsoft, Fox and Outbrain – he managed marketing and advertising teams, combining the latest technologies to achieve the most efficient growth in content monetization. He recently completed a training path on Business Sustainability at the University of Cambridge and joined Atex as Head of Business Development and Sustainability.

Stéphane’s professional DNA is rooted in 25 years of BBC international journalism. He went into broadcast media after a pan-European MBA that took him from France to the UK and Germany. He has spent more than half his life abroad, including post-apartheid South Africa and likes to call himself a serial foreigner. He puts warmth, authenticity and performance at the centre of his coaching work. He enjoys looking at events and the world from as many perspectives as possible and very much welcomes coaching clients from diverse frames of reference. He has co-designed and co-facilitated workshops focusing on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion within and outside the media industry.

Ketil Moland Olsen is currently Senior Project Manager at Media City Bergen based in Bergen, Norway. Before switching roles in April 2021, he held the position of VP of Product Management for Vimond, a video streaming service provider. He was responsible for Vimond’s award-winning workflow products. Before his almost ten years in Vimond, Ketil worked seven years for Bergens Tidende in editorial and technological positions. He also spent a year in Schibsted Norway’s digital division, in charge of developing their online video technology.

Joan is the Echo Editor (Social Media Editor) at the Standard Group Ltd. She is passionate about using digital media to better the lives of people and businesses. Joan has worked in the digital space for nine years, working with various media houses in Kenya in digital/online and social media content development for TV, radio and print. She has been involved in content production, social media and website updates and management, digital marketing, online public relations and social media campaigns execution​.

Édouard Reis Carona is a journalist and the Digital Editor-in-Chief at Ouest-France since 2012. He is in charge of the digital editorial innovation and the coordination of the Ouest-France digital projects, including ouest-france.fr, websites and applications, social networks, video and podcasts.

Michel is a senior data scientist at the Guardian News and Media, working on Natural Language Processing problems as well as the interface between data and journalism. He has built article-to-article recommendation systems in five different languages for BBC World Service Online, delivering recommendations to millions of users every day. Previously, Michel worked on reflective profiling and recommendations, computer vision, object-based broadcasting as well as personalising binaural audio as a research engineer in BBC R&D. Michel is a keen contributor to the field of machine learning. He was a speaker at PyData Budapest 2018 and presented a paper in SIGIR/NewsIR 2019 amongst others.

Up until recently, Ramaa was Senior Editor in BBC News. Her work included driving digital transformation and innovation focused on bringing in new and underserved audiences to the BBC. More recently, after a year long fellowship Ramaa has been sharing her leadership journey as a woman of colour at the BBC. In addition she has designed and delivered a successful Race & Inclusion programme to the BBC’s News board last month. Ramaa was also a member of the BBC’s Coach Network and offered coaching and leadership masterclasses to executives across the BBC.

As head of programming, Melissa is responsible for determining when, where and how to publish The Globe’s content in order to satisfy current Globe subscribers and attract new ones. She leads a team of 15 journalists that includes editors who work on homepage, social media, newsletters, mobile alerts, print and digital sections, and audience strategy. Melissa is also on the hiring committee for The Globe’s competitive summer job program, which receives about 400 applications a year from recent grads looking to get their journalism careers started.

Bala Sundaramoorthy is a veteran strategy, technology and operations executive with over 25 years of industry experience in financial services, media and insurance industries. In his current role as the VP and General Manager for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, he is responsible for strategy, product & technology, print and digital operations/production as well as customer service. Since joining Cox in 2014 he has held several leadership positions and has been instrumental in transforming the digital landscape of all consumer facing products and technology across Newspapers, TV and Radio for Cox Media Group. Starting in 2015, he led innovation by organizing hackathon events across CMG & all Cox divisions; developing ground breaking solutions in the OTT and mobile space and optimizing technology operations. He has a Master’s degree in Business Administration from Goizueta Business School, Emory University.

Aurélien is a journalist and new media enthusiast. He has a strong interest in management, audience development strategy, writing and creating new forms of storytelling (photo, video…). He worked for a French broadcaster before moving to one of the big French newsmagazine, l’Obs, and before joining Le Parisien to boost their video strategy and experiment on new video platforms.

Anna Vissens is a physicist by trade but has spent nearly all her career in media, first as a journalist, and then as a data scientist. Anna leads a team of data scientists at the UK-based Guardian News and Media. Previously she worked at the BBC where in 2007 she received an award for best producer in recognition of success in building new audiences and developing an effective social media strategy. In 2015, Anna decided to drastically change her career and become a data scientist. Anna’s  prime interest is  Natural Language Processing but she also worked on audience segmentation and propensity models. In 2021 Anna took part in JournalismAI’s collaboration dedicated to modular journalism.

Jan Stian Vold is a Norwegian journalist with more than 20 years of experience in the online news business. He was the news editor in Bergens Tidende from 2014 to 2020 and is currently working as a project lead in the same media house. Amongst his recent responsibilities is the so-called Boligrobot – a new and sophisticated way of presenting automated text from the real estate market in and nearby Norway’s second-largest city.

Deirdre Veldon has been Deputy Editor at The Irish Times in Dublin, Ireland since 2017. She joined The Irish Times in 1996, and has since held roles including that of editor of ireland.com and irishtimes.com and Managing Editor for development and operations. She is also a member of The Irish Times Board.

Camillo has been working for the media industry since 1996. A software engineer at heart, he has enjoyed different roles in the software development business, ranging from Product Development management to Operations Director to Product Management. He believes marketing needs to have a thorough understanding of its company, products and the customers it serves. As such he also leads product management for Desk, the Atex multi-channel editorial solution for news publishers.

Since joining WAN-IFRA in 1997, Valérie has accrued more than 20 years of experience as a media journalist. Currently, she is a team member of WAN-IFRA’s Global Advisory division where she works with the Advisory Team in leading global consulting projects. She is also the Programme Lead for WAN-IFRA’s top global conferences including: World News Media Congress and our Digital Media Event Series. She has contributed to numerous research reports, including Alternative Revenue Streams for Publishers. As part of her research, Valérie interviewed numerous publishers who had found success discovering new business models – whether its through events, e-commerce, video or marketing services – Valérie has experience taking the pulse on what generates revenue for publishers.

Cherilyn Ireton leads the World Editors Forum, the community for professional editors within the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA). Now UK based, she worked as a journalist and editorial manager in South Africa before joining WAN-IFRA in 2012.