Trainers | GNI Future Leaders: A Back-to-Work Program for Parents & Primary Caregivers
GNI Future Leaders: A Back-to-Work Program for Parents & Primary Caregivers
Founder & CEO, frayintermedia, South Africa
Paula Fray has worked in media for more than three decades as a journalist, editor, trainer and media manager. Paula was the first female editor of the Saturday Star newspaper in South Africa. She is currently the managing director of the pan-African media training organisation frayintermedia, which she founded in 2005. The organisation has trained journalists, media leaders, civil society organisations, government officials and corporate leaders during its decade-long existence.
She is a trustee of Media Monitoring Africa and IRIN independent news agency. She is a Print and Digital Media SA fellow and a public representative on the Press Council of South Africa.
Paula graduated with a BJourn degree from Rhodes University and has a Woman and Law Certificate from UNISA. A recipient of the prestigious Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University, she is a former member of the Nieman Foundation Advisory Board at Harvard.
Director, Digital Skills Agency, Australia
Corinne Podger is a results-driven consultant and training facilitator, through her consultancy, the Digital Skills Agency. She has a proven track record of supporting newsrooms, NGOs and social impact organisations in more than 50 countries to implement digital innovations that grow audiences and support business priorities. Corinne’s expertise draws on more than 30 years in the media industry as a reporter, editor, lecturer and author. Her specialisms include digital-first newsgathering, online verification, mobile journalism, social multimedia production, podcasting and audio storytelling, and strategic audience engagement that drives brand awareness and media revenue. Her clients include WAN-IFRA, Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union, European Journalism Centre, Thomson Reuters Foundation, BBC Media Action, and ABC Australia. She also works with science and public health organisations to tackle misinformation and disinformation. Corinne teaches on a sessional basis at the Universities of Sydney and Melbourne, and speaks regularly at international journalism conferences. She is a firm advocate of media diversity and inclusion in all her work.
Director, Asia, WAN-IFRA APAC
Joon-Nie leads the WAN-IFRA APAC team in Singapore. A lawyer by training, Joon-Nie spent over 15 years in broadcast television as a reporter, interactive producer, current affairs producer and news editor at Channel News Asia and its predecessors SBC News and TCS News. She has won several in-house awards for reporting, executive producing and best ‘live’ coverage and a Student Emmy for her Masters documentary project produced at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism while under a fellowship from MediaCorp.
In her seven years teaching at Nanyang Technological University, Joon-Nie set up and headed Newsplex Asia, a US$700,000 convergent training newsroom and media lab in partnership with WAN-IFRA.
Besides being a Vice-President of the Singapore Press Club for over 16 years and co-founding the Hacks/Hackers Singapore chapter in 2015, Joon-Nie is also a regular speaker and trainer at conferences, workshops and industry panels both locally and abroad.
Founder, VanMedia Group
In 25+ years as a professional journalist, he worked in print, radio, TV, and online news based in the U.S., Japan, Switzerland, Hong Kong, and Singapore for the likes of CNN International, CNBC Asia, NHK Japan, ABC News Radio and others.
Glenn currently sits on the Boards of Asian American Journalists Association (Asia) and the East-West Center Alumni Association. He is a Past-President of the Foreign Correspondents Association of Singapore, the American Association of Singapore, and the Atlanta Press Club. Glenn is an active member of Asia Professional Speakers Singapore, the American Chamber of Commerce (Singapore), and the Singapore Press Club. Glenn co-authored “Happy Customers Everywhere” and “The American Journey in Singapore” and contributed chapters to five editions of “Living in Singapore Reference Guide” as well as to “Insights from the Inside Volume II” by the Singapore International Foundation.
A Singapore Permanent Resident with his wife and children, Glenn is the inaugural recipient of the East-West Center's 21st Century Outstanding Service Award for his volunteer work across the region.
Media consultant and journalism trainer
PN Balji is a veteran journalist with more than 40 years’ experience in Singapore journalism and has worked in five newspapers, three of them as editor. His experience spans print, broadcast and digital journalism. He is one of Singapore’s most well-known media personalities and has provided communications advisory services to both public and private sector organisations in Singapore, including government ministries, statutory boards and tertiary institutions.
His 2019 book, The Reluctant Editor: The Singapore Media as Seen through the Eyes of a Veteran Newspaper Journalist, weaves a compelling narrative, with anecdotes, of the tussels and confrontations the editors of his generation had with the government and their efforts to hold the ground against political pressure.
Consultant on Digital, SunStar Publishing Inc.
Maria Lourdes (Nini) Cabaero is a pioneer of new media in Philippine community journalism. She was director for content for the integrated newsroom and editor-in-chief of SunStar Cebu, flagship newspaper of the Cebu-based SunStar Publishing Inc. She retired on March 1, 2021. She continues with SunStar as columnist and consultant on digital. SunStar in the only network of community newspapers in the Philippines.
Cabaero holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of the Philippines in Diliman, Quezon City, and a master’s degree in journalism from the Asian Center for Journalism at the Ateneo de Manila University. She currently teaches at the Ateneo master’s program for journalism. Cabaero was a Sandra Burton–Nieman Fellow where she spent an academic year at Harvard University from 2013 to 2014. She took courses at the Harvard Business School, Harvard Kennedy School and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
She won as “Newsmaker of the Year” in November 2020 in the Globe Media Excellence Awards of Globe Telecom for her “impactful body of work” that year and her role in the digital transformation of the community press in the Philippines.
Associate Director, Partnerships, South China Morning Post, Hong Kong
Juliana Liu is associate director of the South China Morning Post's partnerships team. Previously, she was the founding editor of Inkstone, an award-winning daily multimedia online magazine focusing on China-related stories. Before starting Inkstone, she was the BBC’s Hong Kong Correspondent from 2012 to 2017 and had a variety of international on-air roles with BBC News as a reporter, anchor and producer from 2006. She started her journalistic career as a Beijing Correspondent at Reuters. She was the first and only woman of color to be elected president of the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Hong Kong. She is the mother of four young children.
