Roula Khalaf is Editor of the Financial Times. She was previously Deputy Editor from 2016 to 2020, overseeing a range of newsroom initiatives and award winning editorial projects and leading a global network of over 100 foreign correspondents.

Before taking up the Deputy Editor role, Ms Khalaf was the FT's Foreign Editor and oversaw the FT's operations in Europe, Africa and the Middle East. Before that, as Middle East Editor, she launched a Middle East edition and led coverage of the Arab Spring. Ms Khalaf was named foreign commentator of the year at the Editorial Intelligence Comment Awards in 2016 and her series on Qatar won the Foreign Press Association’s Feature story of the year in 2013. She joined the FT in 1995 as North Africa correspondent and before that was a staff writer for Forbes magazine in New York.

Ulrik Haagerup, Founder & CEO of Constructive Institute is a  former Executive Director of News at the Danish Public Broadcasting Corporation. 

He is an award-winning journalist and international public speaker on leadership and strategy and the author of the books A Good Idea – Did You Get It? (2004) and Constructive News: A Confrontation with the Negative Worldview of the Press (2012, 2014 and 2017). 

In 2008, he was a Member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on the Future of Journalism. 

From 1994 to 2002 he was editor-in-chief at Danish broadsheet Jyllands-Posten. From 2002 to 2007 he headed the first full-scale multimedia newsroom at NORDJYSKE. 

He is Knight of Dannebrog and was awarded the Danish Pulitzer for investigative reporting The Cavling Prize 1990.  

Nancy Lane is the dynamic leader of the Local Media Association, an organisation that supports nearly 3,000 newspapers, TV stations, digital sites, radio stations and R&D partners in North America. LMA’s mission is to reinvent business models for news.  

The association announced the creation of Accelerate Local last year and launched six different labs including the GNI Subs Lab, The Branded Content Project and the Digital Transformation Lab for Publishers of Color. In 2020, four new projects have been launched: COVID-19 local news fund (has raised $1.4 million for over 200 publishers), Oklahoma Media Center, a news collaborative in Chicago and The Fund for Local Journalism.

Lane has served as CEO since October 2000 and prior to that she held publisher and senior level positions with daily and weekly newspapers in Pennsylvania, Connecticut and Missouri. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Villanova University and also serves as the immediate past president on the VU Alumni Association Board of Directors.

Ebony Reed is New Audiences Chief at the Wall Street Journal, a member of the strategy team and leading efforts to expand the Journal’s reach.

Prior to joining the Journal, she was director of innovation at the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute and an associate professor at the Missouri School of Journalism.

Reed has worked for both the business and editorial sides of journalism. She spent more than six years with The Associated Press, first as an assistant bureau chief, and later as director of business development for U.S. local markets. As director, she worked with AP directors across the country to find digital and commercial opportunities for the AP. She also worked for the Boston Business Journal as executive advertising director. Reed started her career as a reporter at The Plain Dealer in Cleveland also worked as an editor at The Detroit News.

She’s a graduate of the Missouri School of Journalism with undergraduate and graduate degrees in journalism and media management.

Emily Ramshaw is the co-founder and CEO of The 19th. She was previously editor-in-chief of The Texas Tribune, an award-winning nonpartisan digital news startup that now boasts the largest statehouse reporting bureau in the country and the nation’s most successful business model for local news. A Washington, D.C., native, Emily started her career at The Dallas Morning News. She is the youngest member of the board of the Pulitzer Prize. A graduate of Northwestern University, Emily lives with her husband and daughter in Austin.

Paula Miraglia is one of the co-founders and the CEO of Nexo Jornal, a Brazilian digital-only news startup based in São Paulo. Since its launch in November 2015, Nexo has won the ONA General Excellence in Online Journalism award (2017), the Malofiej bronze medal in for its infographics portfolio (2018), and the NH award for best digital publication (2016 and 2017). Paula holds a PhD degree in Social Anthropology from the University of São Paulo, where she also graduated in Social Sciences. Previously she has been the Director General of the International Centre for the Prevention of Crime – ICPC, based in Canada, and the Executive Director of the Brazilian office of ILANUD, United Nations Latin American Institute.  She has also work as a consultant to the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank.

Fergus Bell is an experienced journalist, editor and leading expert in digital newsgathering, verification, newsroom innovation and collaborative journalism projects. He is also a strong advocate for higher ethical standards in digital journalism.
Fergus’ experience spans both the business and editorial sides of the news industry. He spent eight years at the Associated Press, where he became their first International Social Media and UGC Editor. He then headed up newsroom partnerships and innovation for digital newsgathering start-up, SAM Desk. Fergus founded Dig Deeper Media in 2015 and advises broadcasters, publishers and start-ups on social and digital newsgathering, newsroom transformation and innovation. In 2017 he launched Pop-Up Newsroom, a framework for collaborative journalism projects that has already seen success in the US, UK, Sweden and won an Online Journalism Award in 2018 for "Verificado" - an initiative designed to monitor for misinformation during the Mexican elections. Fergus was named as a 2019 Reynolds Journalism Institute Fellow. He is a faculty member of the European Broadcast Union’s Academy. He serves on the board of the Online News Association. He is the co-founder and CEO of fathm a media consultancy and news lab.

Chris is Chief Digital and Publishing Officer at Nine (prev Fairfax Media). Prior to this appointment he was Managing Director of Australian Metro Publishing, and Director of Publishing Innovation. In his current role, Chris oversees The Australian Financial Review, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, nine.com.au, and 9Now. 

Chris was previously the founding CEO of HuffPost Australia, a joint venture between The Huffington Post and Fairfax Media, and has more than 20 years' experience building market-leading digital media businesses. He was also the founding CEO of Allure Media, one of Australia's largest independent digital publishers, and responsible for launching Business Insider, Gizmodo, Kotaku, Lifehacker, POPSUGAR and ShopStyle in Australia.

Chris' previous experience includes senior editorial roles at News Corp and production company Endemol Southern Star.

Ritu Kapur is the co-founder and CEO of The Quint and board member, World Editors Forum. She is also a Board Member at Oxford University’s prestigious Reuters Institute Of Journalism and the World Editor's Forum. She used to head Programming at History Channel, was Features Editor at CNN IBN, where she launched the popular CJ (Citizen Journalist) Show, among others. Kapur has been recognized by Outlook Business as "Woman of Worth 2017 - The Newsmaker".

Under her leadership, The Quint has grown by nearly 250% Year on Year in terms of both Unique Users and Pageviews, and seen a 100%+ growth in revenue, and pulled in some of the biggest clients in the industry. She has also driven the redesign of The Quint's website, founded the proprietary interactive microsite format "Quint Lab", and launched the health content platform "Quint Fit".

Along with being an accomplished leader, she has spearheaded many initiatives and campaigns tackling social issues. Some of her most successful campaigns are Register To Vote and Power Of 49, which championed a manifesto for women, who comprise 49 per cent of the population. Another significant initiative was The Quint's partnership with BBC, which led to the birth of #SwachhDigital India, a campaign against fake news.

Ritu Kapur has also strived to provide multiple platforms for free speech such as Talking Stalking, Bol and Citizen Q.

A journalist in Asia for nearly 35 years, Maria Ressa co-founded Rappler, the top digital only news site that is leading the fight for press freedom in the Philippines. As Rappler's executive editor and CEO, Maria has endured constant political harassment and arrests by the Duterte government, forced to post bail eight times to stay free. Rappler's battle for truth and democracy is the subject of the 2020 Sundance Film Festival documentary, A Thousand Cuts. 

For her courage and work on disinformation and 'fake news,' Maria was named Time Magazine’s 2018 Person of the Year, was among its 100 Most Influential People of 2019, and has also been named one of Time's Most Influential Women of the Century. She was also part of BBC's 100 most inspiring and influential women of 2019 and Prospect magazine's world's top 50 thinkers. Among many awards, she received the prestigious Golden Pen of Freedom Award from the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers, the Knight International Journalism Award from the International Center for Journalists, the Gwen Ifill Press Freedom Award from the Committee to Protect Journalists, the Shorenstein Journalism Award from Stanford University, the Columbia Journalism Award, the Free Media Pioneer Award from the International Press Institute, and the Sergei Magnitsky Award for Investigative Journalism. 

Before founding Rappler, Maria focused on investigating terrorism in Southeast Asia. She opened and ran CNN's Manila Bureau for nearly a decade before opening the network's Jakarta Bureau, which she ran from 1995 to 2005. She wrote Seeds of Terror: An Eyewitness Account of al-Qaeda’s Newest Center of Operations in Southeast Asia and From Bin Laden to Facebook: 10 Days of Abduction, 10 Years of Terrorism.

Dame Frances Cairncross, is a British economist, respected journalist and academic.
She is Chair of the UK’s independent review into the future of quality journalism.
She is Chair of the Court of Heriot Watt University and a former Rector of Exeter College, Oxford.
She spent 13 years as an economic columnist for the Guardian and 20 years as a senior editor at The Economist.
She is the author of a number of books, including "The Death of Distance: How the Communications Revolution is Changing our Lives".

Patrice Schneider started his publishing career as a journalist reporting from conflicts in Central Asia in the 1980s. Following a 20 yearscareer in publishing (Time Warner Group, Lagardère Active) and working for the World Economic Forum, he became the Chief Strategy Officer for the Media Development Investment Fund (MDIF) which mobilizes impact capital to invest in independent media around the world. Since 1996, MDIF has provided more than $231 million in affordable financing in more 113 independent media businesses across 42countries.

Warren Fernandez joined the paper in 1990 as a political reporter and rose to become a News Editor. He went on to serve as Foreign Editor and Deputy Editor.

Fernandez then joined Royal Dutch Shell in 2008 as a Global Manager for its Future Energy Project, before returning to the paper in February 2012 as its Editor. He assumed the role of Editor-in-Chief of Singapore Press Holdings’ (SPH) English/Malay/Tamil Media group (EMTM) from July 2016.

Fernandez graduated with First Class Honours from Oxford University, where he read Philosophy, Politics and Economics. He also holds a Master’s in Public Administration from Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government.

Katie, James Harding and Matthew Barzun launched Tortoise Media, the slow newsroom, in April 2019.

“Tortoise is unlike anything  else in the market…. From Nando’s to a refugee camp,  Tortoise is taking its journalism out into the real world.” The Drum

In its first year it has grown a devoted membership of over 30,000 and won two awards for innovation and new journalism at the 2019 British Journalism Awards.

Prior to this new adventure as an entrepreneur, Katie was the President of Dow Jones, publisher of The Wall Street Journal, where she led the company to over 3m subscribers, the largest number in WSJ history. She has previously worked at the Telegraph Media Group and The Times, where, as Chief Marketing Officer, she was the architect of the early move to paid digital subscriptions and  created the UK’s first news membership brand, Times+.  She was named Pioneer of the Year at the 2016 British Media Awards. She is vice-patron of the charity, Family Action.

Dr Rasmus Kleis Nielsen is Director at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism and serves as Editor in Chief of the International Journal of Press/Politics.

His work focuses on changes in the news media, on political communication, and the role of digital technologies in both. He has done extensive research on journalism, American politics, and various forms of activism, and a significant amount of comparative work in Western Europe and beyond.

Phillip Crawley is the Publisher and CEO of The Globe and Mail, Canada's National Newspaper. He oversees the strategy and operations of The Globe and Mail newspaper, web sites including globeandmail.com, reportonbusiness.com and globeinvestor.com, and magazines including Report on Business. During his tenure, The Globe and Mail and its staff have won 58 National Newspaper Awards, and been honoured by many organizations. Prior to joining The Globe and Mail, Crawley held a variety of senior executive positions with some of the world's leading media companies in Europe, Asia and New Zealand. From 1997 to 1998 he was the Managing Director of The New Zealand Herald, and later the C.E.O. Designate of Wilson & Horton, New Zealand's largest media group. Between 1993 and 1997 he was Managing Director, The Times Supplements, London. From 1988 to 1993 he was Editor, then Editor-in-Chief of the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong and Editorial Director of Asia Magazine.

Between 1987 and 1988 he was Northern Editor, The Daily Telegraph, London, and between 1979 and 1987 he was Editor of The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne. Prior to 1979, Crawley worked in various editorial roles for Thomson Regional Newspapers. He is chairman of The Canadian Press, a board member of Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, and a governor of the Charter for Business which raises funds for the Duke of Edinburgh's Award in Canada. He is also a board member of The Audit Bureau of Circulation (ABC), The Canadian Newspaper Association, the Royal Conservatory of Music, the Sir Edmund Hillary Foundation and the World Association of Newspapers/IFRA. He serves as Honorary Consul for New Zealand in Toronto.

Andrew Watkins has worked in a technical role in the publishing industry for over 25 years and in the newspaper industry for the last 20 of those.

He has always worked within or closely with Editorial on publishing systems on both digital and print workflows, with a focus on stories and picture publishing and also some work with video.

He is currently Senior Developer at the Financial Times in the CMS team.

Victor Pickard is an associate professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication where he co-directs the Media, Inequality & Change (MIC) Center. Previously he taught at New York University and the University of Virginia and worked on media policy in Washington, DC as a Policy Fellow for Congresswoman Diane Watson and a Senior Research Fellow at the New America Foundation and at the media reform organization Free Press (where he now serves as a board member). Currently he is a visiting fellow at Goldsmiths and LSE. His research focuses on the history and political economy of media institutions, media activism, and the politics and normative foundations of media policy. He has published scores of scholarly articles and book chapters as well as essays for The Guardian, The Nation, and The Atlantic. With Robert Picard, he co-authored the report, “Essential Principles for Contemporary Media and Communications Policymaking”. He has authored or edited six books, including America’s Battle for Media Democracy; Will the Last Reporter Please Turn Out the Lights; After Net Neutrality; and, most recently, Democracy without Journalism?

Roberto Bernabò is the deputy director and digital editor-in-chief of Il Sole 24 Ore. Focusing on growth across multiple online platforms, he has led the renewal of the newspaper’s digital strategy with the launch of a new website, video production, and 24+, a paid platform dedicated to reportage. Previously, as editor-in-chief of Il Tirreno, he led the paper twice to the top three among non-English websites in the Online Journalism Awards. Before that, he led digital innovation as editorial director of Finegil, which controlled all the local newspapers of the Gedi Group.

An internationally recognized expert and speaker on building a more trustworthy press, Lehrman was named one of MediaShift's Top 20 Digital Innovators (2018) for her work founding and leading the Trust Project. Previously an award-winning reporter on medicine and science, her honors include a Peabody Award, duPont-Columbia and the John S. Knight Fellowship, with bylines in Scientific American, Nature, Health, and The DNA Files, distributed by NPR, among others. Her co-edited volume, “Reporting Inequality: Tools and Methods for Covering Race and Ethnicity,” was published in 2018.