Jonathan is Head of Video at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. Before that, he worked at the BBC for 10 years as a Producer and Director making features and documentaries. 

Sean is the Media Director of Save the Children. He was Foreign Editor of The Sunday Times from 1997 to 2013 and ran the newspaper’s digital editions as Associate Editor for three years before moving into the aid sector in 2016. He has worked in nearly 50 countries, including most recently, Somalia and Myanmar.

Hannah Wilkinson is the Director of Media at the British Red Cross, leading an award-winning team, delivering fundraising campaigns and advocacy initiatives, around some of the biggest issues of our time, in both the UK and overseas. Starting her career as a publicist in the entertainment industry, a masters at SOAS in international development saw Hannah move to the charity sector. The power of storytelling can bring people’s experiences to life – her career has taken her from conflict in northern Cameroon, to urban water shortages in Delhi, to newly arrived young refugees in Kent, and many other places in between. She recently became a Trustee at Music in Detention, a charity that enables the voices of those in UK immigration detention to be heard.

Liliane Landor is the Head of Foreign News at Channel 4, responsible for maintaining and developing the programme’s foreign coverage. Liliane previously worked as Language Services Controller for BBC Global News – editorially and managerially responsible for all 28 language services on radio, TV and Online and 1400 staff in England and internationally. She started at the BBC as a producer/presenter in the French service. She was appointed Head of BBC World Service News and Current Affairs in 2006 responsible for all the daily and weekly journalism of the World Service in English. Under her leadership in 2008 her department won 10 Sony Awards – 4 Gold, 2 Silver and 2 Bronze – a singular achievement recognising the breadth and excellence of its journalism. She was born in Lebanon, educated in France and Switzerland. She speaks five languages.

Chloe Gbai is the Director of IF/Then Shorts at Tribeca Film Institute. IF/Then supports short documentaries directed by regional filmmakers. Previously, as the POV Shorts and Streaming Producer, she launched POV Shorts, which earned a documentary short Oscar nomination, two Emmy nominations and an IDA Awards nomination for Best Short Form Series. Her directing/editing work centers around race, immigration and gender. She is a member of Brown Girls Doc Mafia and a member-in-residence of the Meerkat Media Collective.

Flore is an International Media Consultant, specialised in documentary and online video.  With a background in visual anthropology and research journalism, she has a career of over fifteen years of working with independent media companies, digital platforms and documentary organisations in editorial positions (content production & strategy), distribution and business development. Flore was at Zoomin International for over 10 years as the founder of a global production network of 3000+ digital storytellers where weekly on average 15+ stories were developed and produced in 16+ languages. Flore’s work ranges from working as a researcher for long form cinema documentary to developing editorial digital formats such as #LocalHeroes, inspired by the values & behaviours of GenZ. 

She also works with documentary training organisations such as One World Media and its Global Short Docs Forum, EsoDoc, EDN and Documentary Campus.

James Brindle is the Chief Executive of the Journalists’ Charity, a national organisation which provides help and support to journalists working across all sectors in the UK and abroad. Formerly a radio and television journalist James spent eleven years at the BBC in various roles, winning a Sony gold as a radio reporter and producer before moving into television. Since leaving the BBC James has launched three commercial television channels and led projects across a range of genres to both critical acclaim and commercial success.

Nasfim works as BBC Three’s short-form commissioner, looking after a slate of content across a range of genres. Her commissions include the original YouTube series of BAFTA-nominated Eating with My Ex, Romesh Talking to Comedians and ground-breaking constructed reality series, Galdem Sugar. Prior to working as a commissioner, she worked in-house as Deputy Editor of BBC Three looking after content such as the Idris Elba Takeover, Things Not to Say and Drugs Map of Britain.

She started her career as a BBC Wales production trainee and over the years has worked across early iteration of BBC Multi-Platform content as well as linear TV content, with a stint working in the British independent sector for companies such as Two Four, Love Productions and Century Films.

Sean Stephens is VICE News’ London Bureau Chief.  Over the past fifteen years, he’s worked across television, digital, and audio in both news-gathering and output roles.  As a field producer, he worked in more than 30 countries across the globe, focusing on conflict and humanitarian crises. His work in Yemen, producing films about the battle for the strategic port city of Hodeidah, and another exposing human rights atrocities in government-run migrant detention camps garnered two Emmy awards. 

Vivienne is a Reader and Senior Lecturer in Social Justice Journalism and Knowledge Exchange at London College of Communication, part of the University of Arts London. 

She founded the Refugee Journalism Project,an initiative that supports forcibly displaced and exiled journalists to re-connected with their careers in the UK. It focuses on helping them to become better connected within the industry, updating their journalistic skills and getting more of their voices into the mainstream media. Prior to joining academia, Vivienne worked as a producer with the BBC and as a print journalist. Her journalistic work has focused on issues such as deaths in custody, inequalities in the education system and miscarriages of justice. Vivienne is a Fellow at the Royal Society of the Arts. She also sits on the committee of the Association for Journalism Education, a body that represents university educators in the UK and Ireland.

Rebecca Treadway is Head of Media at UNICEF UK, overseeing all PR, news and corporate media and communications for the organisation. UNICEF is the world’s leading organisation for children, working in 190 countries. Rebecca has worked in the sector for more than a decade and worked in more than 20 countries around the world. Prior to her role at UNICEF UK she led teams in the press offices of Save the Children and Comic Relief.

Narinder is a multi award-winning programme maker, with over sixty productions under his belt, from high-profile singles, to groundbreaking series and popular formats. He has worked across a range of genres for the world’s best broadcasters: Channel 4, BBC, ITV, PBS and Discovery. Narinder has a strong track-record of delivering shows that are editorially bold and visually distinct, creating noise and debate, including documentaries like the forthcoming Peter: The Human Guinea Pig, The Massacre That Shook The Empire and America’s Child Brides; specialist factual programmes such as Snowden and Margaret: Inside a Royal Marriage, The Kids With No Memory, and White Tribe; formats like Recipes That Made Me, Young Black Farmer, and Priest Idol; arts shows such as The Real Michael Caine, Soul Nation, and Dancehall Queens; studio shows like The Book Show and The Big Idea; and innovative digital projects like 4thought.tv. 

Laura Crowson serves as Sr. Director of Development for Discovery Channel and Science Channel US. In this role, she is based in London and works alongside international and domestic producers to develop prime-time series for the US networks, while helping to steer strategy for new projects.

During her time with the network, Crowson has been an instrumental part of the Discovery team that is responsible for developing such hits as NAKED AND AFRAID, GOLD RUSH: PARKER’S TRAIL and UNDERCOVER BILLIONAIRE. 

Before joining Discovery, Crowson was a Development Executive/Producer for Gurney Productions in Los Angeles, CA. While at Gurney, she was responsible for pitching and developing projects for multiple networks including DUCK DYNASTY for A&E, AMERICAN GUNS for Discovery Channel and AUCTION HUNTERS for Spike TV.

 Crowson holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree from Dartmouth College where she majored in English Literature & Film and Television Studies. She is based out of the Discovery Communications’ office in London. 

Leila Haddou is an investigative reporter specializing in using data and technology to find original public interest stories. She previously worked as data journalism editor for The Times and Sunday Times, and on investigations for the FT and the Guardian.

Zillah Watson is at the forefront of the VR industry: she leads BBC VR strategy including setting up and running the award-winning team at the BBC VR Hub. With inspirational VR creators like Atlas V, VRTOV, 59 Productions and Aardman, she has commissioned and exec produced numerous critically acclaimed VR experiences for the BBC including Doctor Who: The Runaway, Nothing to be Written, 1943 Berlin Blitz, Make Noise, Damming The Nile, The Turning Forest and We Wait. She’s also driven research projects including an extensive VR audience trial currently running in partnership with over 150 public libraries in the UK.

Previously Zillah pioneered the use of 360 VR for BBC News and as a visiting fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism where she authored ‘VR for News: The New Reality’ in 2017. Her varied career at the BBC began producing TV and radio current affairs documentaries and politics programmes. Later, as head of editorial standards for BBC Radio 4, she led compliance strategy for the network and oversaw all productions from independent producers, including drama. In her quest to innovate she then joined BBC R&D as editorial lead on engineering research on future content, AI and archive curation. 

Marc is an award-winning video- and photojournalist known for his innovative work with photo/graphic novels and 360 video. He has worked across the African continent since 2011 reporting on topics such as child soldiers and female genital mutilation for outlets including Al Jazeera and the BBC. Marc also recently produced and directed an expose of the so-called seduction industry in the UK for the BBC’s flagship investigative series, Panorama. In addition he is a data and freedom of information specialist for BBC Scotland. Marc’s ground-breaking photo/graphic novel ‘House Without Windows’ will be published in English in August 2020. Using embedded QR codes, the reader can scan and watch immersive 360 videos to witness first-hand the effects of war on children in Central African Republic. His innovative work has won awards from Amnesty International, the Canadian Association of Journalists, One World Media, the UN Correspondents Association, and World Press Photo.

Selbin is currently working for the Migrant Voice organization as a Media Lab worker. He organizes and facilitates media training for migrants, refugees and asylum seekers for the purpose of equipping them with media skills so that they can have a voice in the media and public life.

Selbin has worked for the BBC Focus on Africa desk at Bush House in London, contributed to other BBC news and current affairs programmes and was a journalist   for the Southern African Regional Documentation Center, in Harare. He has worked closely on development journalism related issues with the UNESCO office in Pretoria, South Africa and contributed to UNESCO research projects. 

43-year-old Mehdi Rahmani has been living in the UK since May 2019, along with his wife and son. Prior to fleeing to the UK in search of safety, Mehdi lived in Iran where he was a journalist for over 10 years writing for a host of newspapers and magazines, including Zan, Iran’s first ever weekly newspaper focused on women’s rights. 

Now a member of the British Red Cross Voices Network, Mehdi is passionate about using his passion for journalism and storytelling to raise awareness of the issues facing refugees and people seeking asylum.

In 2004, shortly after joining Sky News, Ashish was one of the first UK journalists to be dispatched to Sri Lanka to cover the devastation of the Indian Ocean tsunami that claimed the lives of over 300,000 people. His coverage included a world exclusive report on the deaths of 1,500 passengers aboard the Galle Express after the train was struck by the tsunami near the village of Telwatta. His series of documentaries on the aftermath of the tsunami earned him a top prize at the New York Television Festival Awards.

Ashish’s coverage of the Mumbai terror attacks in December 2008 was awarded a Golden Nymph at the 2009 Monte Carlo Television Festival and earned him his first BAFTA nomination. In 2018, Ashish was awarded a BAFTA, an International EMMY and an Amnesty award for his extensive reporting of the Rohingya crisis on the Myanmar-Bangladesh border. He also won TV Report of the Year at the Asian Media Awards for his coverage of the exodus.

Ashish is now based in London after returning from his role as Sky’s Gulf Correspondent. During his time in the Middle East, Ashish was responsible for setting up Sky News’ Dubai bureau and reporting on stories from across the region, including the Iranian presidential elections, the Somali pirate crisis in the Indian Ocean and the conflict in Afghanistan. 

Dick Fontaine has made over forty films for television and the independent media. A founder member of the breakthrough television investigative series World in Action, he was the first filmmaker to introduce the techniques of Direct Cinema to UK Television in the Sixties, in politics and, in collaboration with the Maysles Brothers, to explore the new universe of celebrity with the Beatles and the world’s top model, Jean Shrimpton. He developed the essay film with, among others, the great British journalist, James Cameron in India, Temporary Person Passing Through, iconic American writers, Norman Mailer, Will the Real Norman Mailer Please Stand Up and James Baldwin,I heard it through the Grapevine. Together with Mike Hodges, he was responsible for the pioneering art film series New Tempo.

His most recent film is a definitive portrait of The Saxophone Colossus, Sonny Rollins – Beyond the Notes, produced by his company, BeBop Productions and BBC Arena, nominated for a Grierson Award in 2012. In the last three years he has had retrospectives at, first, The Anthology Film Archives in New York, then with Cinema de Reel at the Pompidou in Paris and, in 2013, with the InEdit Festival in Sao Paulo, Salvador and Barcelona.

His work is now part of the Film Archive at Harvard University and he has taught at The School of Visual Arts and NYU in New York and has run workshops and master classes across Europe and the USA. He joined the NFTS as Head of the Documentary Dept in March 1995 and retired in 2019. He still runs the Summer Course in July and August.

Jordan McGarry is Film London’s Head of Talent Development and Production, heading the team that discovers and develops London’s emerging filmmakers.

The team’s work includes training, developing and funding first-time feature filmmakers in the Microwave feature scheme; selecting and supporting emerging filmmakers through the Production Finance Market’s New Talent strand. Film London also delivers BFI NETWORK funding in London, commissioning award-winning shorts including Wren Boys, The Field, Landline and White Riot: London in recent years.

Before Film London, Jordan spent five years as Director of Curation at Vimeo, leading the team that programmed the site’s illustrious Staff Picks channel, uncovering talent for Vimeo Originals and brand partners and working closely on the front line of the direct distribution revolution via the development of the Vimeo On Demand platform.

In earlier past lives, Jordan paid her dues as a journalist, in festival programming, video commissioning and as an executive producer at Partizan London.

Rana Ayyub is a prominent Indian investigative journalist and the Global Opinions Writer at the Washington Post. She has reported on religious violence, extrajudicial killings by the state, insurgency and authored an international bestseller titled “Gujarat Files: Anatomy of a Cover-Up’, an undercover investigation which exposes the complicity of the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in state-sponsored genocide.  In a career spanning fourteen years Rana has been awarded the Sanskriti award for integrity and excellence in journalism from the President of India. She was the recipient of the Global Shining Light award for Investigative journalism in the year 2017 and the Most Resilient Global Journalist of 2018 at the Peace Palace in Hague. She has also been named by Time magazine among ten global journalists who face maximum threats to their lives and has been profiled by New Yorker for their Cover Story on India. Rana is based in Mumbai.

Kanika Saigal is a freelance journalist, and communications and PR expert covering sub-Saharan Africa. Kanika was previously Editor at African Banker Magazine, Deputy Editor at African Business Magazine and the Africa Editor at Euromoney Magazine.

As a freelancer, Kanika has written on a number of themes in Africa for Euromoney, Asiamoney, The Africa Report, Quartz and African Arguments. Throughout her career, she has worked on a number of high-level conferences and forums on Africa to bring the debate around African banking and finance to a wider audience.

Kanika has travelled extensively throughout Africa and has interviewed a number of senior bankers, ministers of finance and heads of state. Kanika has a double master’s degree from the London School of Economics and Peking University and an undergraduate degree from Cambridge University. 

Jonathan Calvert is the longest serving editor of the Sunday Times’ Insight team in its 50-year history, having held the job for 14 years. His first major story was exposing the cash for questions scandal as an undercover Insight reporter in 1994, and he was head-hunted soon afterwards to become investigations editor at The Observer where he oversaw a string of major exclusives. Since returning to The Sunday Times Jonathan has taken the helm of the Insight team and steered it through a long line of famous exclusives, such as the Fifa files investigation which made waves around the world. He has won a multitude of journalism awards, including Scoop of the Year on three occasions and Journalist of the Year at the British Press Awards.

David Pilling is the Africa Editor and Associate Editor of the Financial Times. Prior to that he was the Asia Editor, based in Hong Kong, the Tokyo Bureau Chief, the Pharmaceuticals and Biotechnology Correspondent, Deputy Features Editor and a correspondent in Argentina and Chile. He has written two books: Bending Adversity (Penguin, 2014) and The Growth Delusion (Bloomsbury, 2018).

Ellie Stanway is an Account Manager at the Edit & Sound Store in London. The Edit & Sound Store is well known amongst the UK factual production industry and now part of the Clear Cut Group of companies together they provide a home for creative documentary film and television.  In Ellie’s role she oversees the post production management of a variety of factual, documentary and current affairs programmes for broadcasters such as Netflix, BBC, BBC World Service, Al Jazeera, Channel 4 and Channel 5 as well as award winning feature documentaries for cinema release. With extensive knowledge of the full post production life cycle, work-flow planning, client services and creative talent management Ellie has worked with the very best of documentary makers.

“It’s always been important to me to work with factual content and creative’s to play a part in delivering stories that challenge and can have an impact on our culture, society and politics. Despite the 15 years of post production it still fascinates me how truth is always stranger than fiction.” – Ellie Stanway

Louise Donovan is a veteran women’s rights journalist who has published with The Guardian, The Telegraph, ELLE UK, Vice and Foreign Policy. 

With a focus on gender-based violence, she has joined an all-female biker squad fighting rape in India, interviewed the mothers of murdered femicide victims in El Salvador and investigated the rising number of girls being forced into child marriage on the Lebanon/Syrian border.

She is currently based in Nairobi, working as a correspondent for The Fuller Project. She is reporting with the editorial team at The Daily Nation, Kenya’s largest newspaper, as they launch their first gender desk, and cross-publishing her stories with international newspapers/magazines. 

Ade Bamgbala, founder of Blacticulate: a platform that elevates, through podcast and workshop, Black stories and positive actions. Ade was one of five finalists for the Whickers Awards 2019 (at Open City Documentary Festival); Judged a category for the Audio Production Awards 2019; Produces and hosts Stories that Stick podcast.

Olga Inyongo is a Gender and Inclusion Specialist. She has lived and worked in various countries including the UK, Germany, Spain, Mali, Burkina Faso, Tanzania, Burundi, DRC, Sierra Leone, Kenya, Haiti and elsewhere, working for international organisations and NGOs. 

She is also a creative social activist trained in film direction and participatory video. She has produced and directed a creative video to raise awareness about breast cancer.

She was one of the founding members and trainer of GlobalGirl Media UK, a charity which develops the voices and digital storytelling skills of young disadvantaged women in the UK. 

Zubeida has presented Pick of the Week, One to One, and Documentaries for Radio 4 and the World Service. Zubeida worked on Radio 4’s Today programme for 18 years, reporting from countries such as Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Gaza and Nigeria, and has won a number of awards for her Foreign and Domestic reporting carrying out high profile interviews and investigations

Gemma Cairney is a multi-award winning broadcaster, published author, production company founder, magpie, activist and life enthusiast.

Since graduating from BBC Radio 1 in 2016, Gemma has successfully migrated to BBC 6 Music and BBC Radio 4. The third series of The Leisure Society is currently in production for BBC 6 Music, and Gemma’s latest second series of The Sound Odyssey, where she accompanied four well-known British Artists as they took part in musical collaborations in four different countries around the world, aired on BBC Radio 4 in October 2019. Gemma’s radio documentaries include: Island Sounds, Dolly, Dylan or Daft Punk, and Mali Music all for BBC 6 Music. Tempted By Teacher and Bruising Silence (BBC Radio 1) have seen her awarded two Sony Golds and her interview of Grace Jones for Amazing Grace (BBC 6 Music) won the Best Music Show Rose d’Or.

Gemma’s acclaimed television documentaries include: History of Feminism (BBC Learning), Riots: The Aftershock and Dying for Clear Skin (BBC 3). She made royal history by hosting a live Google hangout from Buckingham Palace for The Queen’s Young Leader project alongside HRH Prince William and HRH Prince Harry.

Hanaa’ Tameez is a staff writer for Nieman Lab where she covers journalism innovation. She was previously the diversity reporter for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram in Texas.

She graduated from Stony Brook University’s School of Journalism (2016) and Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism’s Spanish-language journalism program (2017). Her work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Animal Político, Americas Quarterly, and other publications.

She is a Chips Quinn Scholar (2015) and a Maynard 200 Fellow (2018).

Suzgo Chitete is an award-winning journalist with over 10 years’ experience in both broadcast and print media, based in Lilongwe. Currently a news analyst for the Nation Publications, he has previously worked as a senior reporter for MBC and as a field producer, correspondent and fixer for Al Jazeera and BBC. Suzgo has offered communication consultancy to a number of public and private organisations. Suzgo holds a BA in Communication and Cultural Studies from Chancellor College-University of Malawi and a Diploma and Certificate in Journalism from the Malawi Institute of Journalism.

Imelda Abaño is the Philippines and Pacific Content Coordinator for Earth Journalism’s Asia-Pacific project. She is an award-winning Philippine environmental journalist and media trainer who has been covering climate change, energy, agriculture, biodiversity and other environmental issues for over 18 years. Abaño is the founding President of the Philippine Network of Environmental Journalists, an organization which was established in 2010 with the assistance of the EJN. As one of EJN’s Council of Partners, she has led and managed various EJN activities and projects in the Philippines such as environmental reporting, training, mentorship, networking, climate change and biodiversity grants and developed mobile-based reporting. She is one of the first recipients of the Climate Change Media Partnership in 2007 and has since covered a series of United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) negotiations.

Huw began his career at Partridge Films, one of the leading independent natural history film companies in the 90’s.  He went on to work with Mike Birkhead Associates, where he made two BBC Natural Worlds in the US. He joined the BBC NHU in 1995 where he worked on long running series like Wildlife on One and Big Cat Diary, as well as some of the Unit’s biggest blue-chip landmark series, including Land of the Tiger, Andes to Amazon, and Sir David Attenborough’s Life of Mammals.  In 2003, he became part of the Planet Earth team, under Alastair Fothergill, and produced three episodes for this hugely popular and multi award winning series.  

Recently, he produced the Jungles episode for Netflix’s first natural history series Our Planet, which won two Emmys in September 2019. He also produced Dancing with the Birds, a one-off Netflix Original about birds of paradise and bowerbirds, transmitted in October 2019. Currently, he is the series producer of Perfect Planet a blue chip, landmark series for BBC1 – due for transmission in Autumn 2020.

Sam is the Head of Strategy for the soon-to-launch WaterBear Network – a digital platform and mobile app that raises awareness, educates and facilitates positive action through: original storytelling, interactive technology and a global network of impactful partners. Prior to joining the WaterBear founding team, Sam was GM at The European Nature Trust (TENT) where he developed the organisation through a new strategy focused on eco-travel, filmmaking and events across the continent for a growing global network. Before that, Sam spent several years producing film content for the award-winning creative agency ‘Nice and Serious’ in London. A life-long conservationist and biology graduate, Sam is also a photographer, with a Masters in ‘Wildlife Filmmaking’ from the BBC’s Natural History Unit; and a Trustee of the Barnes Film Festival and the Hartswood Trust.

Philip Armstrong-Dampier is an award-winning producer with wide ranging experience of telling compelling stories for premium global platforms. Starting at CBS News, Philip worked for ITV and ITN where he was the managing director of ITN Factual for 12 years; here he executive produced hundreds of hours of programming for UK and international broadcasters. Running his own 1212 Productions he made ‘The Real King’s Speech’ for Channel 4 – seen and sold in more than 120 territories. Other credits include ‘Getting a Fair Trial?’ for BBC Panorama. The Grierson and RTS nominated ‘Stanley & His Daughters’, a 75-minute film for BBC’s Arena and the critically acclaimed 3-part BBC series, ‘Nile Rodgers: How to Make It in The Music Business’. Philip has a well proven, dynamic track record in originating, developing and delivering programmes for BBC, Channel 4, ITV, National Geographic, TF1, Discovery, History and AETN.

As Creative Director at Woodcut Media, Derren is responsible for development and strategy, securing commissions, co-production and programme finance opportunities both domestically and internationally alongside CEO, Kate Beal. Derren has also played a pivotal role as Executive Producer on Woodcut’s talent and access led documentaries including Fiennes: Return To The Nile, Jo Frost on Britain’s Killer Kids, Football: A Brief History by Alfie Allen, The Ivy and Idris Elba documentaries Cut From A Different Cloth and Mandela, My Dad and Me. Other key EP credits include the BFI supported feature documentary, Generation Revolution which premiered at Sheffield Doc/Fest. He joined Woodcut Media from London Live where he was a multi-genre commissioner. Prior to that he worked at the BBC in various roles, including Head of Programming and Scheduling – Global iPlayer, Panorama’s Multiplatform Editor and Multiplatform Executive Producer for the award-winning Our War. Derren is also a BAFTA member, a Trustee for Sheffield Doc/Fest and a Blue Ice Group mentor for Hot Docs 2020.

Kate Townsend commissions original documentaries out of the UK for the global streaming platform Netflix, which has over 150 million members. Kate has worked across titles such as the Emmy nominated ‘Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened’, historical courtroom drama documentary series ‘The Devil Next Door’, and documentary crime thriller ‘Don’t F**k With Cats: Hunting an Internet Killer’. Prior to Netflix, Kate was Commissioning Editor of the BBC’s Storyville, where her credits include A Syrian Love Story, Pussy Riot, Notes on Blindness and India’s Daughter. She’s twice been nominated for a News & Documentary Emmy, and won the RTS award for Best Current Affairs Documentary for BBC Two’s Power To The People.

Lisa Marie is the BFI Doc Society Fund Executive. The Fund supports UK features and shorts, and hosts regional outreach events and a feature film creative lab for grantees.

Lisa Marie’s feature documentary producer credits include Ken Loach’s The Spirit of ’45, Gillian Wearing’s Self Made and Andrew Kotting and Iain Sinclair’s Swandown. She was an executive producer on Randall Wright’s Hockney and Terence Davies’ Of Time and the City. She produced the short film Abandoned Goods by Edward Lawrenson and Pia Borg, which won the Golden Leopard in Locarno. 

In 2009, she launched the production company Fly Film with Kate Ogborn. From 2015 – 2018, Fly Film executive produced 72 short films by young people aged 16 – 24 for Screen South Ignition Random Acts Network, supported by Arts Council England and Channel 4.  Other credits include executive producer on Terrence Davies’ The Deep Blue Sea (Rachel Weisz, Tom Hiddleston), producer of Marc Munden’s TV drama Shiny Shiny Bright New Hole in My Heart (Sally Hawkins) and co-producer of the Michael Powell winner Brother’s of the Head, written by Tony Grisoni and starring Luke and Harry Treadaway.  She was the executive producer of Digital Departures, which made three features to celebrate Liverpool Capital of Culture in 2008. Lisa Marie started her career as a documentary producer/director at US public television station WHYY, in Philadelphia.

Matthew Kaminski is POLITICO’s Editor-in-Chief, overseeing all editorial operations of the publication.

Starting as a freelancer from Eastern Europe before his senior year in college, Matt has reported on international affairs, politics and business on and off for the past quarter century. He covered the former Soviet Union for the Financial Times and Economist in 1994-97, and in 1997 joined the Wall Street Journal in Brussels as a correspondent. He subsequently held various writing and editing roles with the Journal in Paris and New York. In 2004, Matt was awarded the Peter Weitz Prize by the German Marshall Fund for a series of stories on the European Union. His coverage of the Ukrainian crisis won an Overseas Press Club prize in 2015. He was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in commentary that year.

He joined POLITICO in late 2014 to become the founding editor of the European edition, which launched in April 2015. He moved to Washington in the fall of 2018 to help lead the publication’s global expansion efforts, and took on his current role in April 2019.

Tim Singleton has been Director of Communications at the Department for International Development since December 2016. He and his team have overseen campaigns such as #AidWorks, and ensured the UK public see the impact of responses to natural disasters like Cyclone Idai in southern Africa last year.

 He was previously Deputy Editor and Director of Newsgathering at ITV News, directing award-winning coverage on a range of international stories including the devastating earthquake in Haiti in 2010. He also covered the conflicts in Kosovo and Iraq.

Guillermo Galdos is the Latin America Correspondent for Channel 4 News based in Lima, Peru. He is a producer and cameraman as well, and has spent the last fifteen years making documentaries and producing exclusive news stories from Latin and South America for a range of international broadcasters including Channel 4 News. He has covered human rights abuses, the drug trade, immigration and exposed police corruption and the human trafficking industry.

His exclusive story in 2009 for Channel 4 News about a woman who escaped the clutches of a brutal Mexican gang (reported by Nick Martin) won the Foreign Press Association award that year. His documentaries have been shown at film festivals across the world and in 2006 a three part series he produced for Channel 4, Cocaine, was nominated for a Bafta. 

Megha Rajagopalan is an international correspondent for BuzzFeed News based in London. Previously, she was BuzzFeed News’ inaugural China bureau chief and a political correspondent for Reuters in Beijing. She has reported widely across Asia and the Middle East on stories ranging from the North Korean nuclear crisis to gender-based violence in Afghanistan. Rajagopalan was the first journalist to find and visit an internment camp for Uighur Muslims in China’s far west — work for which she won the Human Rights Press Award in 2018. In 2019, she won a Mirror Award for an investigation uncovering the links between Facebook and religious violence in Sri Lanka. 

Previously she was a Fulbright fellow in Beijing and a research fellow at the New America Foundation in Washington DC. She is a recognized expert on the subject of mass surveillance, and has spoken about her work at Yale University, Georgetown University, SOAS University of London, the European Council on Foreign Relations, the Oslo Freedom Forum, the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, SXSW, and other forums. Rajagopalan also appears regularly on TV and radio programs including on NPR, BBC World News, CBS News, and Al Jazeera. She’s a career mentor at the Coalition for Women in Journalism and was selected as an Asia 21 Young Leader in 2019. She speaks Tamil and Mandarin Chinese.

Tristan Anderson is a BAFTA and WEBBY winning documentary director whose films and TV shows have been broadcast in over 15 countries internationally including in the UK on the BBC, Channel 4, London Live , The Community Channel and on the Emmy award winning Current TV. 

Tristan regularly attends international film festivals to speak on panels, lead workshops and masterclasses.  He runs and owns the production company Film-Mode which has produced documentaries for Channel 4, London Live & The Guardian. He also set up Doc Heads the UK leading short documentary screening, networking and membership organisation.

Lynsey Chutel is a writer, journalist and producer living in Johannesburg, South Africa. She has written and produced stories focussed on gender, identity, development, culture and everyday news in parts of east and southern Africa. She has produced documentaries on gender-based violence in South Africa and long features on gender and society. Her reporting has appeared in the Associated Press, Quartz, The Guardian, The Washington Post, and The New York Times as well as several South African and regional television outlets.

Faraz Osman has over 15 years experience in TV, online and media production, working across International Emmy, BAFTA, BIMA and Broadcast award winning content for broadcasters and brands with a particular focus on youth culture. He launched the production company ‘Gold Wala’ with a focus on mixing premium content with purposeful messaging, with the aim of representing communities around the world that are rich with diverse stories.

He devised the creative and European visual style for Apple’s Beats 1 and the Apple Music Festival, Exec Produced live video content with Stromzy, Kylie and Justin Timberlake, helped devise and develop vevo’s ‘VVV’ and ‘Lift’ series, BBC Radio 1 Teen Awards and Live Lounge Live, Disney Channel Access All Areas: Unlocked! and Snapchat’s Hotline Tings. He also Exec Produced two series of the award winning music and youth culture show, Four To The Floor.

Previously Faraz was Editor of Education at Channel 4, commissioning the Emmy award winning Battlefront, E4’s highest rated documentary Don’t Blame Facebook and working with UK Parliament to deliver SB:TV’s groundbreaking DB8.

Ramita Navai is an award-winning journalist, documentary producer and author who has reported from over forty countries. Beginning her career as Tehran correspondent for The Times, she then joined Channel 4’s Unreported World making twenty documentaries and winning an Emmy for Syria Undercover.

Her last two documentaries on Iraqi Shia militias and sex abuse in the UN, both for PBS Frontline and Channel 4’s Dispatches, were multi-award winning, including two Robert F. Kennedy awards and a British Journalism award. Her first book City of Lies: Love, Sex, Death and the Search for Truth in Tehran won Debut Political Book of the Year and the Royal Society of Literature’s Jerwood Prize for non-fiction. She is contributing author to Shifting Sands: The Unravelling of the Old Order in the Middle East.

Nick Ludlam is a Senior International News Editor at Sky News. He started his career in journalism in Washington DC where he worked first as a camera assistant then bureau producer for an independent European production company producing news, features and documentaries. Nick has worked at Sky News since 2001, first as deputy foreign news editor before moving to Brussels as Sky’s Europe Editor to run coverage of the imploding Euro project. Nick then moved to Johannesburg as Africa Editor where he worked with Alex Crawford and Garwen McLuckie for almost six years. Together they covered every conflict and crisis across the continent from Mali, where they were the first media team into Timbuktu as French paratroopers fell from the sky, to the DRC where they filmed children as young as four mining for cobalt. They also regularly covered the conflicts in Syria and Iraq, watching the fight against ISIS unfold on the front lines in Mosul and Raqqa. The team won a One World news award and an International Emmy for their account of the perilous journey of migrants crossing from Turkey to Greece, a One World news award for the DRC’s forgotten conflict, a BAFTA for their Ebola coverage as well as Golden Nymphs for their investigation of the Marikana massacre and rape in Central African Republic.

Yalda Hakim joined BBC World News in December 2012 as a presenter and correspondent.She made her on-screen debut in March 2013 presenting a special three part series of Our World entitled, Iraq: Ten Years On.

While reporting for SBS’s Dateline show for the last four years, Hakim delivered stories from the Middle East, the United States, Africa and Europe. In March 2012, Hakim was the first western journalist to visit one of the villages in Afghanistan’s Kandahar province, where US soldier Staff Sgt Robert Bales is alleged to have shot and killed Afghan civilians

She presented Dateline from a range of locations including from Ground Zero in New York as the world marked ten years since the 9/11 terror attacks; from the streets of Juba, South Sudan, as thousands celebrated the new country’s independence, and from Afghanistan ten years into the US-led invasion, where she interviewed a failed suicide bomber in one of the country’s most notorious prisons. Hakim was also a finalist for the Australian Young Journalist of the Year Award and won the United Nations Media Peace Prize for Best Australian Television News coverage in 2009.

Jeremy Bowen is the BBC’s Middle East Editor.  He has reported from more than seventy countries, covering thirteen wars including those in Afghanistan, Lebanon, Chechnya, Somalia, the Middle East, Rwanda and former Yugoslavia.  His first book, the critically acclaimed Six Days (Simon and Schuster, 2012), tells the dramatic history of the most seminal event in Middle-Eastern history of The Six Day War. This was followed by War Stories (Simon and Schuster, 2012), which examines his life as a war reporter and what the camera lens does to people on either side of it.

Jeremy’s book The Arab Uprisings (Simon and Schuster, 2013) concerns the game-changing events that are impacting the middle east.  It captures the thoughts and feelings of the people involved as the events unfolded, putting these revolutions in their political context, and using them as a prism through which to understand the broader history and landscape of the Middle East.  This is an urgent and authoritative account of the seismic political changes rocking the Middle East, from one of the foremost reporters of our time.

Sarah is an aspiring documentary filmmaker who currently works in post-production as a Junior Editor & Animator at a digital media agency in Angel, London. An alumni of UCL’s & Open City Docs’ MA Ethnographic and Documentary Film programme, her graduation film ‘Anak Malaysia’ was granted the ‘Student Award’ at the One World Media Awards ceremony in 2019.

A British-Malaysian raised in Kuwait, her diverse upbringing and love for international cinema has greatly influenced her desire to share multicultural stories through film. With an academic background in Broadcast Documentary and Anthropology, Sarah is passionate about combining anthropological approaches with visual storytelling to make documentary films that shed light on global socio-political issues, and tell crosscultural human stories to empathetic audiences. She has made documentary shorts exploring themes of religion, identity and subculture, as well as issues such as statelessness and wildlife conservation.

Sarah has been with Al Jazeera English since its launch in 2006. In her 20 years of broadcast journalism she has worked in varied capacities at ITN and Sky, settling on the Newsdesk at Aljazeera. As News Editor she has been fortunate enough to have overseen the work and deployments for all the major stories in the last decade, from the desperate journeys of refugees, European and Presidential elections, Brexit machinations and the many tragic terror attacks the world has witnessed. Sarah was one of the first journalists on the scene of the London Bridge attacks and reported live throughout the night. She has served on the jury for the RTS awards for many years and been privileged to view and discuss such an enormous variety of talent. A busy mother of 2 and keen long distance runner, Sarah is always looking forward to the next challenge and experience on the horizon.