REINVENTING MEDIA BUSINESS

JEREMY GILBERT

As Director of Strategic Initiatives at The Washington Post, Jeremy works to identify, create, and execute unique digital products and storytelling experiences. He works closely with The Post’s engineering, product design, graphics, audience, analytics and advertising teams. In this role, Gilbert figured out how to tell the story of the 2016 presidential race with 3D printers, built The Post’s first automated stories, created The Post's first virtual reality project, initiated the use of 360 cameras, oversaw its first augmented reality story, built a freelance network that changes how The Post covers national stories and launched a new leadership vertical. Before joining The Post he helped National Geographic develop and deploy its digital strategy and was an associate professor teaching media product design, interactive storytelling, web and print design tools and techniques for Medill and the Segal Design Institute at Northwestern University. Previously Jeremy led The Poynter Institute in rethinking and redesigning its industry leading website and served as an art director at a couple of newspapers.

RENÉE KAPLAN

Renée Kaplan is Head of Audience and New Content Strategies at the Financial Times. She heads up a team that helps grow the reach and engagement of FT journalism and pilots innovation in the newsroom. She also directs newsletters and audio, leading content strategies that are transforming and diversifying the FT's journalism. Previously Deputy Editorial Director of news network France 24, and Chief Content Officer at Havas, she is Franco-American and lives in London.

NICHOLAS JOHNSTON

Nicholas Johnston is the editor in chief of Axios, a new media company that through Smart Brevity, gets you smarter faster on the topics that matter most in business, tech, media and politics. He leads the entire Axios newsroom and regularly speaks about politics, policy and business on MSNBC, CNBC and Fox News. Before helping to launch Axios in 2017, Nick was a managing editor at Bloomberg where he oversaw newsletters and breaking news coverage in Washington. Previously as a reporter for Bloomberg he covered the White House, Capitol Hill and the 2008 presidential campaign. Nick began his journalism career at the Washington Post and is a graduate of Georgetown University.

ANA JAKIMOVSKA

Before joining Guardian, Ana was Head of Product Management for news at Sky, with responsibility for creating and managing Sky News’ digital product portfolio. Previously, she was the lead for product proposition and consumer experience on all platforms for BBC Store, and Channel 4’s Product Manager for its digital channels C4 News, Scrapbook, Film4, E4 and 4Now. With her experience in creating digital and editorial strategies for platforms and management of successful digital products development, Anna is now looking after GNM's digital product portfolio at Guardian.

KARIN PETTERSSON

Director of public policy at Schibsted Media Group and chairwoman of WAN-IFRA Media Freedom Board. Formerly she was political editor-in-chief at Aftonbladet, Scandinavia’s biggest daily newspaper. She is a 2017 Nieman and Berkman Klein Fellow at Harvard, and the co-founder and former editor-in-chief of Fokus, Sweden’s leading newsmagazine.

JAMES SAVAGE

Founder and Publisher of The Local, which publishes news from nine European countries for a worldwide audience of 5 million users. As the founding editor of The Local Sweden, James has been reporting on Sweden for fourteen years, and under his leadership, The Local has taken a leading role in debunking false stories about Sweden and the other countries it reports from. James has also led The Local’s push towards a digital subscriptions model.

IVAN KOLPAKOV

Ivan Kolpakov (born 1983), cofounder and editor-in-chief at ‘Meduza.io’, Russian media outlet based in Riga, Latvia. He started working as a journalist in 2001 in Perm (industrial city in the center of Russia), where wrote for a number of local political and business newspapers. In 2010 he launched his own project — ‘Salt’, a political and satirical media about Russia, also based in Perm (it closed down 1,5 years later because of problems with investors and officials). In 2012, Ivan moved to Moscow and became the head of the special correspondents department in ‘Lenta.ru’ — the most popular online publication in Russia at that time. He left ‘Lenta.ru’ with the rest of the team following the firing of it’s editor-in-chief — Galina Timchenko. Together with Timchenko moved to Riga to establish Meduza.io.

MARI-LIIS RÜÜTSALU

Mari-Liis has been working for two different industries which both have been under a change for at least decade.
She was a product development and marketing director in the biggest travel agency of Baltics - Estravel. Then, 8 years ago was she invited to work for Ekspress Group. For two years she was the CEO of Estonian biggest online portal Delfi. After that she merged two companies together which became Ekspress Meedia. It’s Delfi and the biggest media brands in Estonia - Eesti Ekspress, Maaleht, Eesti Päevaleht.

In 2017 was she invited to lead Ekspress Group which has also the biggest news outlets in Latvia and Lithuania. Ekspress Group has also expanded to digital outdoor media and other digital services which stand close to media.

She is a big believer in digitalisation in every aspect. As she believes that we are in the middle of the turbulent changes and times it’s more than exciting to work for media.

RICCARDO TERZI

Riccardo graduated in Economics at Bocconi University in 2004 and earned his Executive MBA at SDA Bocconi in 2015. Always passionate about Internet economy, he has worked in different managerial contexts between media, technology and innovation. He developed a global managerial vision, strongly oriented to performance management and today he mainly supports his partners on the acceleration of their digital transformation process. For five years Riccardo worked in consumer online division at Microsoft. Later he worked as Chief Digital Officer in Viacom. He joined Google in 2013 where he has been working in Strategy and Operation division for 3 years. Today he works in the Strategic Partnership Solutions team of Google, where he takes care of the News & Publishing ecosystem development in Italy and Eastern Europe. As digital ventures passionate and startup-up lover, since 2013 he is an advisor at the IULM Innovation Lab and he is an equity partner and angel investor of iStarter, the Italian accelerator based in London focused on scale-up ventures.

DMITRY NAVOSHA

20 years of author and editor career in leading Russian magazines – Forbes, GQ, Afisha, PROsport. Founder of Sports.ru – one of the largest Russian independent media working for 15 million sports fans. Founder and CEO of Tribuna.com, global media and community for football fans.

ALESSIO CORNIA

Alessio Cornia is Assistant Professor at Dublin City University and Research Associate at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, University of Oxford. His research interest is comparative research on political communication and journalism, with a focus on the relationship between media and politics, news industry developments, digital news, social media platforms, and EU journalism. He was previously Research Fellow at the Reuters Institute and Researcher at the University of Perugia, where he completed a PhD in social and political theory and research. He has published a monograph on EU journalists in Brussels and several articles in academic journals including Media, Culture and Society, the International Journal of Press/Politics, the European Journal of Communication, Journalism, Journalism Studies, and the Journal o Risk Research.

ANDREW ROLF

Andrew Rolf is Innovation Media Group's EMEA Director and advises organisations on digital transformation, customer experience and commercial strategy. Andrew has worked with news and magazine publishers from Abu Dhabi to Zimbabwe to help them prepare for and implement significant and lasting change to their businesses. He was Head of Commercial Delivery at Guardian News and Media, London and a senior member of the team that relaunched the Guardian's award-winning website and mobile live news apps in 2014.
Prior to this Andrew spent 15 years in various consultancies working in Europe and the US. He was Head of Customer Experience at organisational design consultancy KPMG Boxwood where he worked with clients operating in the media, technology and retail sectors.

FRANCES UCKERMANN

Before being appointed Art Director of STERN magazine, Frances Uckermann was Art Director for the magazines "Zeit Wissen", "Allegra" and "Max", headed the editorial design team at SPIEGEL and developed a number of new magazines. She has won numerous awards from highly respected organisations, such as the Art Directors Club Germany and the Lead Awards. Since 2009 she also gives lectures and workshops on editorial design at various design and journalism academies and creative events in Germany.

SASA VUCINIC

Before founding NBM Sasa co-founded and served as the founding CEO of Media Development Loan Fund, mission-driven investment fund providing debt and equity financing to independent media companies in developing world. During Sasa’s 16 year tenure, MDLF provided USD100 million in different forms of financing.

Prior to MDLF, Sasa was a journalist in Yugoslavia, where he served as the first CEO of Radio B-92 in Belgrade and Editor in Chief of magazine “NON”.

VICTORIA SVANBERG

Victoria is a board member of NWT Gruppen AB, and a president of NWT Media, as well as president of the Swedish association of publishers TU and vice president of the Association of European Publishers News Media Europe (NME). Victoria also holds MBA from Stockholm School of Economics and is an honorary doctor at the University of Karlstad. Having worked in the industry for many years, she has gained experience in media industry in various board positions and positions in NWT Media.

CHANPREET ARORA

Launched the leading global youth brand, VICE, as a full-scale media company in India. Currently Consulting with the New York Times. Held Leadership Roles in Times Internet (Bennet & Coleman), Ernst & Young – Media Advisory Practice and Buddh International Circuit (Formula One in India).
She has recently completed the prestigious fellowship at the Reuters Institute for Study of Journalism at Oxford University.

As a consultant and Leader, authored multiple articles published in leading business papers and Industry reports for leading institutions such as TRAI, Prasar Bharti, USIBC and Ernst & Young.

Her strength within the ambit of media strategy lies in introducing a new concept, idea or brand targeting the youth and helping it build resonance in a new market.

DIDZIS MEĻĶIS

Journalist with over 20 years of experience, also worked as an international news editor for Dienas Bizness, the largest business oriented daily newspaper in Latvia. Member of Latvian Journalists' Association.