Virginia Lavín Amirola

Editorial Director, La Factoría (Grupo Prisa), Spain

Virginia Lavín Amirola is an editorial strategist for online and off-line media. She is the Editorial Director of La Factoría, the content marketing business unit at Prisa Noticias, Spain's leading news media company. The team creates multi platform owned media for major brands. Their strengths are high editorial standards, a thorough understanding of the online, offline and broadcast production and strong expertise in understanding the role of editorial content to create brand and company value.
Some of La Factoría’s international clients are: Netflix, Mazda, Siemens, Renault, Air Europa, Amadeus, and national: BBVA, El Corte Inglés or Aena.

Frederik Andersen

CEO, VICE Media Scandinavia, Denmark

Frederik is an executive level director with 15 years of International experience as Chief Executive Officer and Executive Creative Director. He's now Chief Executive Officer of VICE Scandinavia headquartered in Copenhagen and with offices in Stockholm and Oslo. VICE Scandinavia is part of VICE, the world’s leading next-generation youth-media company, with offices and operations in 30+ countries across every continent influencing what a whole generation of young people see, hear, wear, think, eat, dream.

Frederik Andersen works cross media, cross industry in the junction between branding, design, product innovation and marketing.

Managing teams in Copenhagen, London and New York, Frederik prefer working with successful growth companies where creativity and branding plays a key role in facilitating or transforming a business. Thorough experience with setting up, merging and turning around creative organisations and building next-gen creative teams.

Frederik has led creative organisations to go from good to great, which have allowed him to develop big ideas and implement creative strategies for ambitious clients like Lexus, Clinique, Finlandia, Johnson & Johnson, Faberge, JoMalone, Unilever, Google and Cisco, always centered around growth, creativity and branding.

International awards for marketing, communication, visual design, product design and innovation. 

Miriam Quansah

Digital Lead, BBC Africa, UK

In her role as the Digital Lead for BBC World Service’s Africa Hub, Miriam Quansah oversees all the digital output from BBC Afrique (French for Africa), Pidgin, Afaan Oromo, Amharic, Tigrinya  BBC Gahuza (in Kinyarwanda/Kirundi), BBC Hausa, BBC Somali, BBC Swahili as well as BBC World Service’s English-language output for Africa.  She is also responsible for ensuring the hub’s digital platform strategy and ensuring that BBC Africa is keeping pace with the rapidly evolving virtual world.

As part of the BBC World Service expansion, which will see an addition of six new languages to the existing six, Miriam leads on this regional development's digital strategy, which will see the establishment of two digital innovation hubs in Lagos and Nairobi.

Miriam is also in charge of BBC Africa’s ‘Mobile First’ initiative that seeks to make sure that BBC World Service is making the most of Africa’s mobile revolution. Against this backdrop, she works to ensure that the BBC is giving audiences in Africa the news and information they need, where they need it and when they need it.

Before being appointed to her current position, Miriam was BBC Africa Social Media Producer, leading social-media products and engagement for BBC Africa and driving social-media content creation and social-media strategy across BBC Africa platforms. 

Miriam joined BBC World Service in 2008 as a radio producer.

Ghanaian-born Miriam graduated from the London School of Oriental and African Studies in Anthropology of Media.

Ismael Nafría 

Author of the book "La Reinvención de The New York Times" & Digital Media Expert, Spain

Author of the book "The Reinvention of the New York Times" and editor of the weekly newsletter Tendenci@s on the latest digital media trends. Ismael Nafría is an independent journalist, writer, editor, consultant and speaker specialized in digital media. He was journalist in residence at The Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas at University of Texas at Austin for the 2016-2017 during which he wrote his book on the NYTimes, his fourth. He was the Digital Innovation and Content Director (2011-2016) at Grupo Godo and deputy editor at Prisacom, the Internet company of Grupo PRISA (2005-2008) . He has led several consultancy projects for media companies worldwide and is the author of three other books on journalism and digital media. For more information, visit his website:  www.ismaelnafria.com

Selymar Colón 

Managing Editor and Senior Director - News Digital, Univision Communications Inc., USA

She has been with Univision since 2006 working across various roles and going up the ranks as producer for Sunday show, Al Punto, hosted by Jorge Ramos. A digital pioneer, Colón championed the use of social media in the newsroom and created a team of multimedia producers to produce digital only videos in her role as director of digital integration.

Colón has produced the coverage of the Haiti earthquake and World Cup in 2010, President Obama’s second inauguration, one of the first interviews with the first Hispanic Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, digital special “The Hispanics of the President” and Spanish-language network exclusive interview with Hillary Clinton in 2015. Univision News the first to Periscope an interview with a presidential candidate. Her efforts contributed to Univision News winning awards for Children of the Border online coverage of the Humanitarian Crisis at the U.S.-Mexican border and TV news special “Meet the Candidates.”

Named a 40 under 40 : Latinos in American Politics by the Huffington Post, Colón holds an M.S.  in Investigative Journalism from Florida International University and a B.A. in Communications and Business from Lynn University.

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Leonard Stiegeler

General Manager of Swiss Ringier Africa AG

Leonard Stiegeler has been the General Manager of Swiss Ringier Africa AG since 2016 - leading the company's operations in classifieds, e-commerce, content and its digital agency on the continent. Brands belonging to the company and/or the operating groups it is setting up are among others Pulse, Jobberman, Cheki, DealDey, Brighter Monday, Private Property and Rupu and it is active in 10 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. 
Prior to his work with Ringier since 2013, Leo helped to establish Rocket Internet and other German investors in Africa.

Valérie Arnould

Business Editor - Global Advisory Team, WAN-IFRA, Germany

Valerie has worked for most media magazines in France covering broadcasting, print publishing, IT and online. She joined IFRA in 1997 as chief editor for the French magazine and later became deputy chief editor for all editions. She has also contributed to WAN-IFRA’s research reports on topics like digital media, newsroom management and free newspapers.

Dr. Mario García

CEO and Founder, García Media, USA

Dr. García is currently working on its project #715.  He has worked as a design/editorial consultant in 120 countries. Among his projects, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, South China Morning Post (Hong Kong), New Straits Times (Malaysia),  Aftenposten (Norway), The Philadelphia Inquirer, Die Zeit and Handelsblatt (Germany), Gulf News (Dubai), all the McClatchy newspapers in the US, 8 Postmedia newspapers in Canada,  Goteborgs Posten ( Sweden), Il Secolo XIX (Italy), The Citizen (South Africa).

He is also the Senior Adviser for News Design/Adjunct Professor at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, which he joined in 2013 as the Hearst Digital Media Professor in Residence. Mario founded the Graphics & Design program at The Poynter Institute for Media Studies, where he serves as a member of the Poynter Foundation. He has received over 300 SND Awards including the Lifetime Achievement Award. People Magazine selected Mario among the 100 Most Influential Hispanics.The University of Missouri awarded Mario its Medal of Honor in Journalism.

Jim Bowes

CEO and co-founder, Manifesto, UK

Jim Bowes is the CEO and co-founder of Manifesto - the award winning digital agency specialising in digital transformation, technology, content and strategic experience design.

Jim set up the London based business in 2011, designing digital services and products around the needs of users, working with health, housing, travel, charities and third sector organisations. Jim has worked in digital or digital content for the last 19 years, and co-hosts a monthly technology podcast, AlexaSTOP! about how technology is changing people’s lives, and presents a weekly tech show, de:code, on Hoxton Radio. Jim’s career also includes his position on the Board of Trustees for Asthma UK.

In 2018 Jim is part of the team launching a new innovation and technology group called The Panoply taking up the role of Chief Innovation Officer. An optimist, he also spoke at the 2018 SXSW conference about how when it comes to what digital technology can do for us all - the best is yet to come.

Regina McCombs

Senior Editor for Visual News, Minnesota Public Radio, USA

Regina McCombs is Senior Editor for Visual News at Minnesota Public Radio, working with a team to develop photography and video (for radio!). She was a faculty member of The Poynter Institute, where she taught multimedia, mobile and social journalism. Previously, she was senior producer for multimedia at StarTribune.com in Minneapolis, arriving there after working as a photographer and field producer at KARE-TV in Minneapolis. For StarTribune.com, she coordinated multimedia coverage, shot and edited video stories and produced major projects. She also taught classes in online journalism and TV news at the University of Minnesota, where she received her master's degree. Winner of numerous Best of Photojournalism and Pictures of the Year International awards for multimedia storytelling, Emmys for her video and multimedia work, and an Eppy for the MPR team's photography, she speaks regularly about finding telling stories on Web and mobile platforms.

Stefan Sartorius

Founder, CEO and Videoproducer, Longtail Media Group, Germany

Stefan Sartorius is the CEO and Founder of Longtail Media, a company specialized in video production. Sartorius has been working as Instructor for Mobile Journalism since 2015. He gave basic and advanced training for mobile editorial video production, corporate video production, reporters and news hosts. Stefan Sartorius conducted among others several workshops for Funke Media Group and local TV stations.

His earlier career began at a local TV station, Center.tv Köln, as a video journalist and later as Editor-in-Chief and News Anchor.

Juan Varela

Senior Digital Consultant and Strategist, NBCUniversal|Telemundo, USA

Juan Varela is a journalism and digital expert with more than 25 five years of experience managing and developing news media in all the platforms. He has been general manager, executive director and Chief Digital Officer in several news media, both in print and digital.

He has worked in more than 30 countries and a hundred projects in Spain, Latin America and the United States. He lives in New York and currently is working in two projects, one for NBCUniversal (Telemundo) in Miami and other with El Observador in Montevideo (Uruguay).