Arwa Damon

Journalist & Humanitarian

Arwa Damon is an award winning former CNN senior correspondent and an expert on the Middle East, best known for her ability to tell the human story in the midst of war and chaos. She is the founder and president of the charity INARA that provides medical and mental health care to children impacted by war. Arwa also recently directed and produced the award winning documentary “Seize the Summit” that tells the story of four young refugees from Syria, Afghanistan, and Ukraine that come together to take on Mt Kilimanjaro and make a stand against war.

Xhemajl Rexha

Chairperson of the Association of Journalists of Kosovo

Xhemajl Rexha is a freelance journalist working for Kosovo media, since 2005 and currently Chairperson of the Association of Journalists of Kosovo, in his second term. At AJK he works to promote media freedoms in the country, free speech and safety of journalists. He leads initiatives and projects on fighting disinformation, gender-sensitive reporting, combating hate-speech in media, and reforming media laws in the country. These projects are organized with various partners such as National Democratic Institute (NDI), OSCE Mission in Kosovo, the US, UK and Germany embassies and include journalists from different communities, including Kosovo’s largest ethnic minority, Serbs. His work has been published in local and regional media in Europe, including The Guardian and Service 95. Rexha was the first-ever fellow from Kosovo in the 2024 cohort of the World Press Institute.

Fauziyya Tukur

Investigative Journalist, BBC

Fauziyya Kabir Tukur is an award-winning journalist with over a decade of experience in digital journalism, specializing in investigating disinformation campaigns across Africa for the BBC. A 2023 fellow of the United States’ World Press Institute, Fauziyya is a co-chair of the BBC’s Global Women in News (GWiN) and serves on the board of Pink Arena Foundation, a non-profit committed to transforming Nigerian women through mentoring and coaching. She has attended leadership courses in Nigeria, the UK, and the US and holds a Master’s in Communication and Development from the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Matthias Sdun

Documentary Filmmaker

Matthias Sdun is an award-winning documentary filmmaker and expert in visual storytelling. He specializes in AI-powered image and video creation, guiding clients on how to integrate these tools into their video strategies. He is a 2015 World Press Institute alumnus from Hamburg, Germany.

Bridget Rollason

Foreign Correspondent, Australian Broadcasting Corporation

Bridget Rollason is an award-winning journalist for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. She has been a political reporter with the ABC for the past 7 years. She now lives in London where she works as a foreign correspondent for the ABC covering European news and also produces for the BBC World TV News channel.

Veronika Munk

Director of Innovation and New Markets, Denník N

Veronika Munk is an award-winning Hungarian journalist with 20+ years of experience. She is working in the management of the leading independent Slovak news outlet Denník N, which has Czech and Hungarian language versions as well. Veronika was the founding Editor-in-Chief of the Hungarian independent online news daily, Telex. She was the Deputy Editor-in-Chief at Index, Hungary’s largest online news daily from where she and her 80+ colleagues resigned in July 2020 due to external political influence on the outlet. Veronika has a media studies PhD and teaches courses on journalism at ELTE University, the largest Hungarian university.

Zakhar Protsiuk

Chief Operating Officer, The Kyiv Independent

Zakhar Protsiuk is the Chief Operating Officer at The Kyiv Independent where he leads reader revenue, marketing, product and ecommerce teams. He is also a co-founder and former managing editor at The Fix Media, a media about the European publishing sector. Zakhar is also an Associate Partner at Jnomics, a UK-based media consultancy, where he worked with more than 20 European publishers on org building and business sustainability.

Joanna Elmy

Digital Journalist & Researcher

Joanna Elmy is a writer, researcher, and journalist based between Philadelphia, U.S. and Sofia, Bulgaria. She relies on her experience as a digital journalist, novelist, and social sciences applied researcher to make sense of a changing newsscape and find new ways to tell the stories of our dynamic times.

Peter Erdelyi

Founding Director of the
Center for Sustainable Media

Peter Erdelyi is the founding director of the Center for Sustainable Media. He is a media executive from Budapest, Hungary, with over 25 years of experience in journalism and media management. He consults for the Media Development Investment Fund and teaches digital media strategy at ELTE University in Budapest. As a Fellow at the Reuters Institute at the University of Oxford, he researched digital audience revenue strategies in countries where the media environment is under pressure. Over the past two decades, he has been involved in launching and running various digital outlets in Hungary and has served on the Executive Board of the European Digital Media Observatory. He holds an MSc from the London School of Economics.

Graham Griffith

Journalist

Graham Griffith is a veteran audio producer and designer of radio programs and podcasts who has launched such programs as On Point and The Takeaway in the US. As a media strategist he has worked with civic minded journalism organizations like the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, The On Being Project, The Conversation, and most major market public radio stations in the US. He was a Fulbright Scholar in Sofia in 2023-2024, and continues to collaborate with independent journalists and civic service organizations throughout Central and Southeast Europe. He writes the Notes from New Europe column for Transitions Media, a regional news site based in Prague. In April he will be launching a new model for creative journalism, the Effervescence Collective, based in Portland Maine.

Cesare Treccarichi

Investigative Journalist

Cesare Treccarichi is an investigative journalist with Today.it, part of Italy’s Citynews editorial group, where he covers political and economic issues, as well as the energy transition and climate change. He is a former fact-checker at Pagella Politica, an IFCN-certified fact-checking organization, and has previously worked with newswires and digital media outlets. Cesare specializes in data-driven investigations that blend traditional reporting with OSINT, verification tools, and deep-dive research across open data platforms. He was a 2024 fellow of the World Press Institute.