Majed Al Suwaidi was appointed as the Managing Director for Dubai Media City (DMC), Dubai Studio City (DSC) and Dubai Production City (DPC) in March 2016.

Prior to his current role, Majed was the Managing Director of Dubai Internet City (DIC), the MENA region’s largest ICT business community and Dubai Outsource City (DOC), a modern, hi-tech business hub dedicated to the growing outsourcing industry.

Majed began his career at TECOM Group as the Director of Business Development for DIC and DOC where he developed the business parks’ strategy of business partner acquisition and retention. Under his leadership, both business communities witnessed success and the effective implementation of TECOM Group’s strategy, a world-class business community developer, by delivering maximum value to business partners, stakeholders, and community as well as improving the market share.

He played a crucial role in supporting and fostering startups, entrepreneurs and technology SMEs within DIC, enhancing the technology ecosystem in Dubai. Under his leadership, Dubai Internet City launched in5 innovation centre to support start-ups in technology in 2012 and was named a Strategic Partner of Smart Dubai in 2015.

Jumana Ghunaimat is a leading Jordanian media figure with an extensive career in media policies, journalism, and activism.

As a Minister of State for Media Affairs (June 2018 – November 2019), Ghunaimat led government communications, advancing progressive media policies, formulating the government’s socio-economic narrative, and closely managing crossgovernment media campaigns and operations.

As a minister, Ghunaimat advanced several media and communications initiatives, including reforming the appointment process for the senior leadership positions at the Media Commission (media regulatory body), JRTV (national TV and radio broadcaster), and Petra News Agency – rolling out a competitive merit-based appointment process. Fact-checking was a key communications priority for Ghunaimat. Accordingly, she envisioned and supervised the development, launch and activation of the government’s first fact-checking platform as a strategic and tactical response to a media environment characterized by aggressive fake-news dissemination. This effort was part and parcel of a wider approach Ghunaimat strongly supported to deliver a nation-wide and cross-generational Media and Information Literacy framework, which aimed to equip citizens with the necessary tools to discern credible information and quality journalism.

In addition to her core responsibilities in the media and communications fields, Ghunaimat continued her passion for women activism during her ministerial post, chairing the Inter-Ministerial Committee (IMC) for Women’s Empowerment – which leads the Jordanian National Action Plan (JONAP) for the Implementation of UN Security Council resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security. Prior to joining government, Ghunaimat’s activism spanned women empowerment and human rights. She contributed to constructive public conversations and policy development as a member in the International Women’s Forum, the Women in News organization (WANIFRA), and the board of trustees of the National Center for Human Rights.

Ghunaimat had an extensive media career working in several leading local publications. Between 2012 – 2018, she led the independent daily newspaper Al Ghad as editor-in-chief with a focus on enhancing the digital presence of the newspaper. These efforts positioned Al Ghad among the top online news sources. While leading the newspaper, Ghunaimat continued writing a semi-daily column focusing on socioeconomic issues, such as poverty, budget, energy, and countering corruption.

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 10 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.

She is responsible for all WAN-IFRA activities in the countries of the Middle East,
working closely with the company's members in that region.
Previously she has held various leading positions at WAN-IFRA. As Director of Marketing
and Membership, she was Head of the marketing and PR team with responsibility for
all global marketing activities. In this capacity, she introduced a new logo and dynamic
new corporate identity.
As Director of Membership she acted as the contact for all members worldwide, while
also introducing a new membership model and structure.
Upon joining WAN-IFRA, initially as Head of IT, she implemented two editorial systems
at the company.
Before coming to WAN-IFRA, she worked for Monotype in the position of Head of
Application. During her time at that company she played an instrumental role in the
market launch of a new editorial system.
She began her career at ATEX, the leading system supplier for editorial systems, where
she worked as a trainer and application specialist. Her duties in this position included
training editors and journalists in leading media houses in both Germany and the UK.

As a Partner at Innovation, Juan Senor has directed projects all over the world helping news operations to re-invent their products and stay relevant with shifting audiences. He has worked and advised hundreds of media companies on every continent. He serves on the Advisory Board of several media companies around the world. 

He has been listed as one of 'The World's Leading Innovators' in Journalism and Media' by Journalism UK Site.

Mr Señor is a highly-sought commentator on the media industry, speaking at global forums and quoted frequently in leading publications such as The Economist and The Financial Times. 

He is also the co-editor of two annuals books; Innovation in NewsMedia and Innovation in MagazineMedia, written on behalf of WAN-IFRA and the FIPP respectively.

He is a former journalist and presenter for PBS's NewsHour, EBN-Wall Street Journal TV, CNBC Europe. And he served as London correspondent of International Herald Tribune Television. His work has been nominated for an Emmy Award and his television programme, Media Report, was voted by viewers as Europe’s Best Business Programme. He continues to work as a live events and television host and presenter globally.

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.

Paul Verwilt is a seasoned C-level executive with over 25 years of management experience and 15+ years in the high-tech industry. He's been COO at Mediahuis and CEO of its Digital Marketplaces in the last seven years since the merger of Belgian publishers Corelio and Concentra's news and classifieds business. Prior to that, Paul spent eight years at Concentra rising through the ranks to CIO and later COO positions.

Mediahuis is the largest newsmedia publisher in Belgium with 4 titles (De Standaard, Het Belang van Limburg, Het Nieuwsblad and Gazet van Antwerpen). Mediahuis is also the owner of NRC, the leading Dutch quality newsmedium, TMG Media with Telegraaf as its flagship and MGL, a strong regional publisher in Dutch Limburg. Recently Mediahuis acquired INM, the leading publisher in Ireland and Northern Ireland and Saint-Paul Luxembourg, owner of the Luxemburger Wort.

In addition, Mediahuis holds positions in the digital marketplaces business in Belgium, the Netherlands and Ireland (Jobat, Zimmo, Hebbes, Vroom, Gaspedaal, relatieplanet, carsireland, etc) as well as radio, TV and freesheet markets. It has around 4,300 employees and revenues of just over 1000 million euros a year.