Astrid Ascar has 29 years’ experience in the media industry. She began her career as a radio and TV journalist and producer, and started working in the digital media and marketing space in 2004. She has worked for media brands including DStv, Carte Blanche, Summit TV (now Business Day TV), The Home Channel, CNBC Africa, SABC TV, SAfm, Highveld and in more recent years co-hosting an online radio business show on Hot919 fm. 

Astrid’s consulting work focus for the past 10 years has been digital and integrated marketing and communications strategies, content creation and production, key messaging and copywriting, website audits including UI and UX consulting, helping clients implement plans across owned, earned and paid digital platforms, and using data analytics to generate business insights. She also MCs, gives talks, and facilitates workshops and conferences, and offers training in digital media and marketing, key message crafting, media interview skills, presentation skills, and crisis comms. 

Since March this year Astrid has been fulfilling the role of Chief Strategy Officer for the Wunderman South Africa group. 

Catherine Gicheru is an International Center for Journalists Fellow. Gicheru is a veteran journalist with two of the leading media organizations in the region. She was the first woman bureau chief and the first female news editor of the Nation Media Group in the region. She is also the founding editor of the daily newspaper, the Star.
She co-founded PesaCheck, East Africa’s budget and public finance fact-checking and verification initiative. She is a member of the Advisory Board of the Reuters' Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford University, was a member of the advisory board of the Open Society Foundation’s Fiscal Governance Program which seeks to promote openness, accountability, and equity in fiscal and economic systems around the world. She was an advisory member of the State of Technology in Global Newsrooms survey conducted by the ICFJ which looked at how media professionals are adopting and adapting to digital technologies.

Gicheru is a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University, a Reuters Institute Journalism fellow at Oxford University, and a 1992 IWMF Courage in Journalism award winner.

Born in Cape Town, South Africa, Lamb is a Strategy Consultant, now living in Miami, Florida, and specialising in media companies. "The goal of my consulting practice is to utilise the sophisticated strategic marketing principles and techniques, learned while doing my MBA at Harvard Business School, meshing them with a hands-on sales approach, to generate new revenue streams for publications and websites. ROI is achieved by focusing on NEW-NEW revenue ... from customers that have never used our products before: print or online."

Dmitry is an expert in digital transformation, content strategy, and innovation. He worked for 21 years at the BBC in London where he was responsible for developing and implementing the BBC’s digital editorial offer for 40 non-English foreign language new services. Originally from Moscow, Russia, Dmitry worked in various editorial-development roles for the digital section of BBC News. These roles required liaison between editorial, product and strategy teams in order to drive innovation and develop new ways of reaching audiences, increasing engagement across the world and, crucially, driving culture change is newsrooms. He is an experienced digital leader in content creation, specialising in growing audiences across the world, driving editorial changes in newsrooms and adapting the way organisations work in digital space, especially around content innovation and audience engagement.
After his years at the BBC, he joined Culture Trip, a startup operating at the intersection of media and travel. He is now pursuing new adventures. Dmitry's main area of expertise is on the intersection between Editorial, Organisational, Strategy and Product sectors.