Born in Bogota on August 10, 1951. He was a cadet at the Navy Academy in Cartagena; he studied Economics and Business Administration and carried out graduate studies at the London School of Economics, Harvard University and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.

He was Chief of the Colombian delegation before the International Coffee Organization (ICO) in London; he was the most recent Designate to the Presidency and Colombia’s first Foreign Trade Minister. He has also been Finance Minister and National Defense Minister. During this last position, he was in charge of leading the implementation of the government’s Democratic Security Policy.

He created the Good Government Foundation (Fundación Buen Gobierno) and founded the political party Partido de la U in the year 2005, currently Colombia’s largest political party.

As a journalist he was a columnist and Deputy Director of the newspaper El Tiempo, he was awarded the King of Spain Prize and was president of the Freedom of Expression Commission for the Inter American Press Association (IAPA). He has published several books, among which the most significant are The Third Way, co-written with the former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and Check on Terror (Jaque al Terror), where he describes the most important actions against the Farc terrorist group during his tenure as head of the Ministry of Defense.

On June 20, 2010, (after obtaining the largest vote during the first round of the presidential elections which took place on May 30 of the same year) at the second round of the presidential elections, he was elected President of the Republic of Colombia for the four year period between August 7th, 2010 and August 7th, 2014. He obtained more than 9 million votes, the highest amount obtained by any candidate in the history of Colombian democracy.

During his campaign, he promised to lead a government of national unity that would carry out the transition from Democratic Security to Democratic Prosperity.

On June 15, 2014, in the second round and with more than 7.8 million votes, he was reelected as President of the Republic for the 2014 - 2018 constitutional term with a government plan based on three pillars: Peace, Equity and Education.
President Santos is married to María Clemencia Rodríguez, with whom he has three children: Martín, María Antonia and Esteban.

Rosental Calmon Alves is a professor of journalism at the University of Texas at Austin, where he holds the Knight Chair in Journalism and the UNESCO Chair in Communication and is also the founder and director of the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas. Created in 2002, the center has benefited thousands of journalists around the world with training programs. In Latin America and the Caribbean, the center has helped journalists to create a new generation of organizations dedicated to elevating the professional and ethical standards of journalism in their countries. In 2016, he was awarded with the Maria Moors Cabot Prize.

Melissa Bell is Publisher at Vox Media. Together with Matthew Yglesias and Ezra Klein, Bell cofounded Vox.com in the spring of 2014. Previously, Bell was the Director of Platforms at the Washington Post and a columnist for the paper. Bell is a journalist turned technologist, an unusual breed in news organizations today.

Erik Bjerager, Editor-in-Chief and Managing Director of the Danish national daily Kristeligt Dagblad, is the immediate Past President of the World Editors Forum, the global association for senior newsrooms executives within the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA).

Bjerager has served as Editor-in-Chief of Kristeligt Dagblad since 1994. He became Managing Director of the daily a year later. He has been a member of the WEF Board since 2001. In Denmark, he is chairman of the board of the media-owned national news agency, Ritzau. He has been the chairman of the Danish Press Foundation since 2001, and is currently the chairman of the Copenhagen's Editors Association.

Bjerager, who has published several books, has been awarded the Berlingske Foundation's Journalists Prize and the Jubilee Prize of the National Press Club of Denmark.

Rodrigo Bonilla is one of the Cultural Change Ignition Program Managers. 

He's Regional Director for the Americas, at WAN-IFRA, the World Association of News Publishers. He heads WAN-IFRA’s operations for North and Latin America based out of Mexico City. Rodrigo joined WAN-IFRA as Manager of Press Freedom Missions in January 2010, leading the organisation’s advocacy missions worldwide. In 2013, he went on to manage WAN-IFRA’s overall activities in Latin America and launched the LATAM edition of WAN-IFRA’s prestigious Digital Media Conferences, which has since become the go-to event for the region’s most innovative media leaders. The Americas office monitors industry’s trends and offers services to the organization's members and partners across the continent. 

Rodrigo graduated in both History and Political Science from the University of La Sorbonne, Paris, and holds a Master Degree in International Cooperation and Development from the same institution. 

Francisco holds a master’s degree in Jurisprudence and Philosophy of Law from the University of São Paulo (Brazil), where he also earned his bachelor of laws degree (LL.B., 2011). He is a member of Brazil’s Empirical Legal Research Network \ (REED) and winner of the “Brazil’s Internet Framework Bill & Development Award” (Google/FGV-SP). In 2013, Francisco was a visiting researcher at the Center for the Study of Law and Society from the University of California at Berkeley. He was also a teaching assistant at Fundação Getulio Vargas Law School. Between 2012 and 2014, he acted as the coordinator of the Internet, Law & Society Nucleus at the University of São Paulo (NDIS-USP). Currently Francisco works with Internet policy monitoring and analysis-production. 

Diego is a Digital Growth & Transformation Expert. He has vast experience in designing, structuring and leading Operations and Content teams and a proven track record of tangible audience and income uplift, both in the U.S. Hispanic market as well as in Latin America.

He is currently Regional Digital Director for Discovery LATAM & US Hispanics.

In the US, he led the Product and Strategy for Discovery DLA: tudiscovery.com and Discoverybrasil.com. Previously, he was VP of Product and Digital Operations for UNIVISION (Noticias, Deportes & Entretenimiento), Univision Connecta & UFORIA APP.

In Latin America, he was Digital Managing Director for ICCK (Digital arm of Grupo Santo Domingo), Colombia's largest and most diverse media holding, with brands such as EL ESPECTADOR, CARACOL TELEVISIÓN, BLU RADIO, GOL CARACOL, CINECOLOMBIA, SHOCK, CROMOS.

Prior to that, he was Digital Managing Director for EL TIEMPO Casa Editorial, covering the strategies of media brands EL TIEMPO, PORTAFOLIO, CITYTV, VIVEIN, ALO, MUJERES, MOTOR, REVISTA DON JUAN ABC DEL BEBÉ.

He worked in content marketing as Head of Innovation, content and operations at pioneer digital agency Indexcol for regional clients such as Coca-Cola Latin Center Division & Warner Bros Theatrical.

He has spoken at several WAN-IFRA events in Latin America and Europe, as well as INMA, SIP, Hispanicsize Miami, Silicon Beach Fest, Digital Futuro Forum Miami, and many more. 

Phil Chetwynd was appointed AFP's Paris-based Global Editor-in-Chief in October 2012. He is responsible for the output of some 1,500 text, photo and video journalists and plays a major role in driving the agency's evolving multimedia strategy around the world.

He joined AFP in 1996 after three years in British regional newspapers and has since been posted in the Middle East, Europe and Asia. He reported as a special correspondent from some 20 countries including Afghanistan, Pakistan, North Korea, Israel and the United States in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.

Chetwynd was also AFP's Deputy Bureau Chief in China for two years. Between 2002 and 2012, he was based in Hong Kong as first News Editor and then Chief Editor for the Asia-Pacific region where he gained widespread experience managing major global stories such as the 2004 and 2011 tsunamis, the conflict in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and the rise of China.

He set up AFP's first multimedia integrated newsroom in Hong Kong and played a major role in launching the video service in Asia.

As Managing Director of Global Partnerships, News and Publishing at Google, Laurent is in charge of defining and implementing Google solutions for the News and Magazines industry. Laurent and his team are working with the largest news and magazine companies helping them to develop successful digital strategies. Laurent has over fifteen years of experience in the technology and media space. He joined Google nine years ago and has held several positions within Google’s display organization in Europe and in the US. This includes Head of Operations for Display Sales in Europe, where he launched DoubleClick Ad Exchange and drove the adoption of programmatic opportunities by media agencies and publishers. Prior to joining Google, Laurent led the public segment for Dell Computers in Western Europe, and spent ten years in management consulting focusing on high tech and media sectors. Laurent holds an engineering degree in telecommunications and has a postgraduate degree in finance.

Guy Crevier has been President of Gesca and Publisher of La Presse, a multiplatform French-language news medium of record in Canada, since 2000. In recent years, Mr. Crevier has led the company’s transition to a new digital business model with the launch of La Presse+, a digital edition for tablet that blends the best of print media, the Web, mobile applications and video. The enormous success of La Presse+ with readers and advertisers led to his decision to cease publication of the weekday print edition of La Presse on January 1, 2016, and to replace it with La Presse+. At the same time, he began commercializing the La Presse+ digital platform to other publishers. Prior to this major digital shift, Mr. Crevier had already outsourced the printing of La Presse and expanded the company’s publishing platforms. He also oversaw diversification of the company’s operations into many areas, including the development of digital businesses, television production and book publishing. A veteran of more than 30 years in the communications field, Mr. Crevier has held executive positions in several major companies. Prior to becoming President of Gesca and Publisher of La Presse in 2000, he served as, among others, President of Canada’s largest French-language television network (TVA) and of a cable company (Vidéotron), as well as being a member of the executive team of Telesystem and President of the film and television producer and distributor Motion International.

Louis Dreyfus is the President and Publisher of the French Groupe Le Monde. He is also President of Huffington Post France and leads the board of directors of weekly magazines Télérama and Courrier International. He is a board member of Agence France-Presse (AFP) and Vice-President of the supervisory board of news publisher Groupe Nouvel Observateur.

Dreyfus graduated from the HEC Business School and London School of Economics (LSE). He held executive positions at Hachette Filipacchi Médias (HFM) in the U.S. and France, and at the French daily newspaper Libération.

Professor Paul Egglestone is Director of Research and Innovation in the College of Culture and Creative Industries at the University of Central Lancashire. He holds the chair in Creative and Digital Technologies.  

A former independent television producer working for BBC, ITV and Sky in Regional and network programming, he established the University of Central Lancashire’s international research centre, the Media Innovation Studio, (www.mediainnovationstudio.org) in 2012. The Studio’s remit is to inhabit ‘liminal spaces’ between disciplines. It aims to explore, research and innovate within the digital ecosystem evolving around us.

Paul is a founder member of the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA) Global Alliance for Media Innovation. He is co-founder of the Civic Drone Centre whose mission is to develop drone technologies for humanitarian aid, media and search and rescue operations.
 

Marcos is a specialist in digital content management. He currently holds the possition of Digital Content Manager at Artear, the television media company for Grupo Clarin. He previously worked at Clarin.com, CNNenEspañol, ESPN, Business Group (Spain) and Grupo Ferre Rangel (Puerto Rico). He holds a BA and MA in Journalism and a Masters in Business Administration.

Ricardo Gandour is a Brazilian journalist and media consultant. He directed major newsrooms and media companies in Brazil, like CBN Radio Network, Grupo Estado (Estadão daily newspaper) and O Diário de S.Paulo. Gandour also worked for Infoglobo and Folha de S.Paulo. He is Master in Science of Communication at USP University and teaches Journalism at ESPM. Gandour is member of the board of Instituto Palavra Aberta (NGO dedicated to freedom of expression), Columbia Global Center Brazil and WAN-IFRA LatAm.

Dr Mario Garcia is CEO and Founder of Garcia Media, a global consulting firm. 

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.

He is known worldwide as one of the premiere media designers, having completed over  700 projects in 120 countries, including TheThe Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Paris Match (France) , South China Morning Post (Hong Kong), New Straits Times (Malaysia),  Aftenposten (Norway), The Philadelphia Inquirer, Die Zeit and Handelsblatt (Germany), all the McClatchy newspapers in the US, eight Postmedia newspapers in Canada, Goteborgs Posten( Sweden), Il Secolo XIX (Italy), The Citizen (South Africa). His current projects include Tagesspiegel (Berlin), Kurier (Vienna) and NOZ Digital group (Hamburg).

Currently, Dr. Garcia devotes most of his consulting and workshops to help organizations with transformation to a mobile-first approach, including training for how to write/edit/design for the smallest platform - that of the smartphone - where a large percentage of users get their information.

His mobile storytelling digital book, The Story, was published in late 2019 in a trilogy covering Transformation, Storytelling and Design.

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 been involved with the Institute's EyeTrack studies since the 1980s, including the most recent EyeTrack for the Tablet in 2012.

His academic career includes full professor at both Syracuse University's Newhouse School of Public Communications and the University of South Florida's Department of Mass Communications. He is the author of 13 books, including his first digital publication, Storytelling in the Age of the iPad.

Mario 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.

Martha is one of Colombia's most innovative news executives. 

She directed the redesign of the business newspaper, La República, as Strategy and Business Director, a project that later earned a Lápiz de Acero (Steel Pencil) Award. She subsequently led the renovation project at EL COLOMBIANO, as part of its 100th year anniversary, and created and directed the Strategy and Innovation Lab (ECOLAB), a position she has filled since then. In January of 2013 she was named Editor in Chief of EL COLOMBIANO, a multimedia brand with more than 108 years of history, always committed to social development.

She currently serves the board of INMA (International News Media Association) and its LATAM board, as past-president. She's part of the board of the Medellín Museum of Modern Art as well as on the board of the Secretos para Contar Foundation, which promotes literacy and education for rural families.

She has been recipient of the Fe en la Causa (Faith in the Cause) medal awarded by the Presidency of the Republic; the “José María Córdoba” Military Merit, awarded by the National Army of Colombia, and she and her team have earned four major INMA awards, a King of Spain, and several SND awards for excellence.

Justin Hendrix is Executive Director at NYC Media Lab. Hendrix connects companies seeking to advance digital media technologies with New York City’s universities to drive R&D and innovation. Launched by the New York City Economic Development Corporation, NYU and Columbia University, NYC Media Lab is a public-private partnership encompassing the universities of NYC and corporate members such as Hearst, ESPN, Major League Baseball Advanced Media, Bloomberg, News Corp, NBCUniversal, Viacom and Verizon. The Lab's interests range across disciplines from data science to design to engineering, and its programs include seed R&D projects with member companies as well as The Combine, which encourages digital media startup formation and technology commercialization on the City’s campuses.

Previously Hendrix was Vice President, Business Development & Innovation for The Economist, where he directed prototyping and commercialization of new digital media business concepts. He is a regular writer and speaker on media & innovation. Hendrix holds a Bachelor of Arts from the College of William & Mary and a Master of Science in Technology Commercialization from the McCombs School of Business, University of Texas at Austin.

Jeff Jarvis is professor and director of the Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism. He is the author of “Geeks Bearing Gifts: Imagining New Futures for News,” "Public Parts," "What Would Google Do?", and the ebook "Gutenberg the Geek." He is also cohost of the podcast "This Week in Google."

Jarvis was president of Advance.net, the online arm of Advance Publications; creator of Entertainment Weekly; TV critic of TV Guide and People; Sunday editor and associate publisher of the New York Daily News; a columnist on the San Francisco Examiner; and an editor on the Chicago Tribune. He blogs at Buzzmachine.com.

Beginning in the mid-90s, Kalle was one of the key designers of the strategy and success of Aftonbladet’s digital business development. The strategy and its implementation have deeply influenced the Schibsted corporate strategy.
Driving Aftonbladet to be one of the first digital news media in the world to ask users to pay for digital content, Kalle was also instrumental in developing its mobile strategy. He has over 35 years in media and is Senior Advisor to Schibsted Sweden as well as WAN-IFRA. Kalle is also a Board Member of Svenska Dagbladet.

As a senior policy advisor in the department of Global Public Policy Development at the Internet Society, Konstantinos provides analysis and strategic advice in support of the Internet Society’s policy, advocacy and mission, including the promotion of the open development, evolution, and use of the Internet for the benefit of all people throughout the world. 

Konstantinos has extensive experience in Internet policy and governance arrangements. He leads policy development and coordination on issues relating to the digital economy, including access and competition, intellectual property, technology trade, and Internet governance.  Over the past years, Konstantinos has held various leadership roles, including the chair of the Non-Commercial Users Constituency at ICANN and a member of the Special Trademark Issues team, which drafted the rights protection mechanisms for the new generic top-level domain names. 

Konstantinos joined the Internet Society after working as a senior lecturer at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, UK. He has a bachelor’s degree in law from the Aristotle’s University of Thessaloniki. He holds two masters degrees, respectively, in International and European law (Sheffield) and in Information Technology and Telecommunications law (Strathclyde). He also holds a doctorate and he is the author of the book “The Current State of Domain Name Regulation”. He is also an arbitrator for the Czech Arbitration Court.

Wolfgang Krach, 54, is currently Editor-in-Chief of “Süddeutsche Zeitung”, the largest selling national quality newspaper in Germany, based in Munich. Wolfgang studied philosophy, worked for several news agencies (AP, Reuters, dpa) and served as Munich correspondent for the regional daily “Donaukurier”. From 1993 to 1997, he was a political reporter at STERN magazine in Hamburg. Following this post, Mr. Krach was deputy bureau chief in Berlin of the news magazine DER SPIEGEL, after which he headed the national desk at DER SPIEGEL based in Hamburg. In 2003, he came to “Süddeutsche Zeitung” to serve as the paper's managing editor. In 2007, he was appointed to the role deputy editor-in-chief, since 2015 he has been editor-in-chief. As Editor-in-Chief he oversaw “Süddeutsche Zeitungs” investigation first of the Panama Papers – a cooperation with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) that was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting 2017, then the investigation of the Paradise Papers – also in cooperation with the ICIJ – that won a George Polk Award in 2018.

Frida Kvarnström has been working within Schibsted Media Group for six years, in Sweden, Norway and Hungary. During this time in the group, she has been responsible for commercial product development on mobile platforms at VG, Blocket and Aftonbladet. Today she is Sales Director with focus on new ad-technology and how to increase revenue from B2B segments, with the help of geotargeting technology.

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.

Bismarck is the CEO of Wizeline, a business intelligence software company. Wizeline was created to help companies use data to build products that their customers use and love. Bismarck is also founder and chairman of Wize Services, a global product services company focused on supporting media companies with technology product development. Prior to Wizeline, he co-founded Ooyala, a video platform company that delivers video to over 200 million unique viewers, monthly. In 2014, Ooyala was sold to Telstra for 400 million USD. Prior to Ooyala, Bismarck was an early product manager at Google where he managed the growth of display and video advertising products. Businessweek named Bismarck one of the nation's top entrepreneurs, and in 2014, the Mexican Ministry of Exterior bestowed the Ohtli award upon him.

Bismarck has a B.A. in Economics from Stanford University.

Matt MacVey is developing immersive journalism curriculum and workshops at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism. Matt has worked with interactive storytelling in the exhibitions department at AMNH and worked on a report about VR for the NYC Media Lab.

Gabriela Minjares is an investigative journalist at El Diario de Juarez in northern Mexico. A veteran of 20 years at the newspaper, Gabriela specializes in covering issues related to corruption, urban affairs and public safety.

As Ciudad Juárez became the most dangerous city in the world in the period between 2009 and 2012, Gabriela was one of the journalists most involved in covering the wave of violence unleashed by drug cartels. She has covered in depth the impact the violence had in the city and its victims and is co-author of the book “Ciudad Juárez: A Border in Crisis”.

In response to the toll that violence also took on local journalists, Gabriela was a co-founder of the Juarez Journalists Network, a not-for-profit organization started in 2011 to promote solidarity, peer support and training among journalists. She currently chairs the Network.
She has a bachelor’s degree in Communications from the Universidad Autónoma de Chihuahua and a Master’s degree in Investigative Journalism from Florida International University.

Matt Murray is Deputy Editor in Chief of The Wall Street Journal. Before his appointment as Deputy Editor in Chief, he had served as deputy managing editor, U.S., in which he oversaw national and corporate news, and as deputy managing editor, foreign, in which he oversaw foreign and finance news. He joined Dow Jones & Company in April 1994 and has held a range of reporting and editing positions. Mr. Murray is the author of “The Father and the Son,” a memoir about his father’s entrance into a monaster, and the writer of “Strong of Heart,” a memoir about former New York City fire commissioner Thomas Von Essen’s experiences during the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Born in Washington, D.C., Mr. Murray received both a bachelor’s degree and master’s degree in journalism from Northwestern University.

Miguel Henrique is the President and CEO of El Nacional, one of Venezuela's last standing critical media voices to the current regime. Since 2015, runs his newspaper in exile from Madrid. Venezuela's government is pursuing him for several politically motivated lawsuits and has publically threatened to jail him in case he returns to his country.

Miguel Henrique Otero was born in 1947 and holds a Mathematics degree from the Central University of Venezuela. After doing a postgraduate degree in Business Administration, in the university, he traveled to England where he studied Economics at Churchill College, Cambridge University. On his return to the country, he began the extensive activity, both in the private and public sectors, which has continued until today.

In what regards daily ​​El Nacional, Otero has been Managing Director of the newspaper, CEO and Chairman of the Board. He has also been vice president of the Bloque de Prensa, the main press association in Venezuela. He has been author and promoter of successive innovations: creation of sections and media outlets, who have always had the novelty category. In Venezuela he's recognized as the pioneer of the professional use of new technologies both in the journalism profession and in the management of media companies. 

His experience and wide knowledge of institutions have been applied not only in his national daily, but also in business schools (IESA), not-for-profit organizations (Red Cross of Venezuela, Artisan Foundation Colonia Tovar ), human rights organizations (SIP/IAPA), cultural organizations (Ateneo de Caracas), international business associations (he's former President of Grupo de Diarios America, member of the Board of the Inter American Press Association and of the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers, WAN-IFRA).

Mark Pan is Newsela’s Partnership Strategist, focused on developing and scaling partnerships that transform the way students develop nonfiction fluency and critical thinking skills: through the news.

Launched in June 2013, Newsela strives toward its mission of unlocking the written word for everyone by publishing high-interest news articles daily at five levels of complexity for grades 2-12 using Newsela’s proprietary, rapid text-leveling process. News articles are adapted from partners such as AP, Washington Post, and The Guardian. Now, the news is becoming an integral piece to students and teachers across the country— 75% of all schools in the U.S. use Newsela.

Prior to Newsela, Pan was an early employee at Coursera, leading their Partnerships team in new revenue generation and partner satisfaction.

His interest for scaling education through technology stems from his experience teaching ESL in Hong Kong and Malaysia.

Andiara Petterle is an entrepreneur and executive of the digital market since 1998. Currently, she is senior vice-president of Product Development and Operations at Grupo RBS. Previously she was vice president Newspapers and Digital Media for the same group. Before joining RBS, Petterle was the Executive Director of Strategy and Business Development at e.Bricks, RBS’s investment company focused on the digital industry. At e.Bricks, she acted as an advisor to several technology, e-commerce and media companies. She founded Grupo Bolsa de Mulher, one of the largest women's digital media companies in Latin America, and was CEO of Predicta and other digital companies in the country. Petterle has a bachelor and a master’s degree in Social Communications from PUC-RJ, was an invited researcher at Brown University, and has participated in business training programs at Harvard Business School and Stanford University Graduate School of Business.

Ernst-Jan Pfauth is the former Editor-in-Chief of Internet at NRC Media, as well as an acclaimed technology author and columnist. In 2008, he co-founded The Next Web blog, which is now amongst the 10 most-visited blogs in the world. At De Correspondent, he serves as publisher, fostering the expansion of the platform.

Lydia Polgreen is pioneering the globe and representing the newsroom in a company-wide initiative to engage readers in languages other than English. Previously, Ms. Polgreen was Deputy International Editor, the South Africa bureau chief, a correspondent for the New Delhi bureau and chief of the West Africa bureau. Before that, Ms. Polgreen was a metro reporter for The Times, beginning in 2002. In April 2016, she became Editorial Director & Associate Masthead Editor for the NYT Global and is architecting the company's global expansion strategy.

Ms. Polgreen was a staff writer for the Orlando Sentinel from February to June of 2002. From July 2000 to January 2002 she was a staff writer for the Albany Times Union, covering city hall, police investigations and other local issues. She began her career as assistant editor and business manager for The Washington (D.C.) Monthly from August 1998 to August 1999.

She received her B.A. in liberal arts from St. John's College in 1997. In 2000 she graduated, with honors, from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism with her M.S. in journalism.

Ms. Polgreen was a 2006 recipient of the George Polk Award for foreign reporting, in recognition of her travels deep into the war-torn western regions of Sudan to report on the carnage in Darfur. She received the 2008 Livingston Award for international reporting, for her series, "The Spoils", a riveting account of how mineral wealth has brought misery and exploitation to much of Africa. In 2007, she was honored as a young global leader by The World Economic Forum.

Ms. Polgreen currently resides in New York.

Courtney C. Radsch, PhD, is a free expression advocate who works at the nexus of media, activism and technology, with a particular interest in the Middle East. Dr. Radsch has spent her career developing a 360-degree perspective on how journalism and human rights can empower citizens through her work as a journalist, an academic, an international civil servant, and program manager. As Advocacy Director at the Committee to Protect Journalists she frequently speaks about these issues in the media and at events such as the Internet Governance Forum. She is editor of UNESCO’s flagship publication "World Trends in Freedom of Expression and Media Development" and contributed to the conceptualization of the “internet universality” framework. Dr. Radsch started her career in journalism at the Daily Star in Lebanon, followed by a position with The New York Times, and then Al Arabiya in Dubai,

Dr. Radsch holds a Ph.D. in international relations from American University, a master's of science in Foreign Service from Georgetown University and a bachelor's degree with highest honors in mass communication from the University of California, Berkeley. She blogs at Arab Media and the Huffington Post, and has written for a range of publications. She is also the author of several book chapters and monographs. Follow her on Twitter @courtneyr

Aniq Rahman is president of Moat, an analytics and intelligence company focused on digital advertising. Moat develops technologies to help brand advertisers and publishers evaluate and optimize digital advertising by measuring attention. Prior to Moat, Rahman was CEO of Instinctiv (acquired by SoundCloud), a venture-backed technology company that produced desktop and mobile multimedia software. Rahman actively advises and invests in technology companies, and is a venture partner at Vast Ventures. Rahman was an early part of the team at Behance (acquired by Adobe). In 2012, Rahman was named to Business Insider's "25 Under 25 in NY."

Journalist and expert in journalism ethics, professor at the University of the Andes and lecturer in social communication. He has been a columnist for El Tiempo, El Espectador, El Colombiano and El Heraldo.

He received the national prize from Círculo de Periodistas de Bogotá in the category of press in 1993 and the National Prize of Journalism Simon Bolivar in 1985 and 1986. He also received the San Gabriel award given by the Colombian Catholic Church in 1994, the Germán Arciniegas award from Editorial Planeta in 1995 and the Latin American journalistic ethics Award granted by the Latin American Journalism Center -CELAP-, sponsored by the Florida International University, in 1997. He is the author of 22 books. In 2014 he received the recognition for journalistic excellence in the Gabriel Garcia Marquez Journalism Award.

Daniel holds an executive MBA, specialized in marketing, and has over 15 years experience in management positions in marketing and sales. He counts with extensive experience in brand positioning, development and new products launching, lifecycle product management, luxury and mass marketing strategies, pricing, business plans, trademarketing, retail, business alliances and new business development, as well as in design and implementation of strategies for local and regional marketing. His background also covers digital and mobile business. He's a teacher for undergraduate and graduate university students.

At El Tiempo, he's responsible for the business strategy's definition for the portals Eltiempo.com; Portafolio.co; Motor.com.co; futbolred.com among other premium networks with more than 22 million unique users. He's also in charge of the business unit P&L, usability and performance, brands in the digital ecosystem, audience management, social media strategy, monetization and of new products development.

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.

Helen Situ is the Virtual Reality Evangelist at NextVR, the leader in live virtual reality entertainment. Helen is driven by passion to connect the world through VR shared experiences. Helen believes that virtual reality is the ultimate empathy machine, and Virtual Reality will completely change how we explore, experience, and share. She holds a BA from the University of California, Berkeley, and she was hired as the 4th employee at NextVR. Helen is a reoccurring judge with the annual innovation contest: Big Ideas at Berkeley. In early 2016, Helen launched SH//FT, a non-profit organization dedicated to creating opportunities for underrepresented groups in emerging technology. Follow Helen on Twitter and Medium @HelenSitu.

President Nelson Mandela in 1997 made an impassioned plea for black professionals to enter the mainstream economy of South Africa to bring about meaningful transformation of the social and economic landscape in order to redress the economic legacy of apartheid. This resulted in Dr. Survé leaving his first love medicine, and founding the Sekunjalo Group, which is today wholly owned by the Survé family. Today Sekunjalo is one of Africa’s most successful Investment Holding Groups with a portfolio of 176 investments and a net asset value exceeding $3.5 billion.

Sekunjalo’s investment portfolio includes Oil and Gas, Food, Fishing, Aquaculture, Power, Resources, Transport and Mobility, Telecoms, Civil Security and Defense, Media, Technology, Bio-technology, Healthcare & Pharmaceuticals and Asset Management. Sekunjalo pioneers many social impact investment initiatives in Sub-Saharan Africa.

The story of Africa’s rising is an important narrative that The Survé family and Sekunjalo have committed to by investing in media on the African continent. In South Africa, Sekunjalo has acquired Independent Media (20 major titles, more than 6 million daily print readers and 3 million online viewers).

Two important initiatives which the Survé family and Sekunjalo has funded and committed to are: the launch of The African Independent (AI), the first continent wide print newspaper (distributed to 40 countries in Africa) which is also accompanied by the online website

The second major initiative is the launch of The African News Agency (ANA) to provide the first news and content syndication service by Africans for an African and global audience. ANA’s success is unprecedented in African media in that it recently placed a minority shareholding of 10% with international investors at a company valuation of a billion dollars (six months after its launch).

Dr. Iqbal Survé is a medical doctor born and educated in South Africa. He was affectionately known as the “Struggle Doctor” because of his provision of medical care towards victims of apartheid brutality including those imprisoned on the infamous Robben Island such as Nelson Mandela on his release from Robben Island in February 1990.

Eric Tourtel has more than 15 years of industry experience in a variety of sectors, bringing expertise in international sales, operations and business strategy to his current role as Managing Director of Teads in Latin America. Teads, previously known as Ebuzzing, is a leading global technology company on a mission to reinvent video advertising. Based in Miami, Eric joined Ebuzzing in 2013 as Vice President of International Business, prior to the company’s rebranding and merger in 2014.

Michał started his professional career in media with Axel Springer in 2006 and he had almost 9 years tenure in a variety of roles. Michał worked as sport journalist, sport section manager, Managing Editor of biggest Polish daily newspaper Fakt and Fakt.pl Editor in Chief.

In March 2015 he moved to Germany where during next six months in cooperation with international team he was involved in launch of upday, the news aggregator, recently created by Axel Springer in partnership with Samsung. Currently he is Editor in Chief of upday in Poland and he heads editorial team of six people.

Michał holds a Masters’ degree in political science from University of Warsaw. He graduated Axel Springer Top Talent management program developing young executives with leadership potential.