Focus: Media/Journalism
Mariam El Marakeshy
Mariam El Marakeshy is an award-winning filmmaker, multimedia storyteller, educator, researcher, and cultural specialist who works in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and the USA. She is a former United Nations staff member. Mariam’s projects explore migration, culture, museums, environment, education, and media ethics. She has worked with National Geographic, ITN UK, USAID, the UN, and many NGOs. Her globally recognized works include films such as “Transit” and “Misafir A Guest” with unique storytelling from the Greek island of Lesvos and Istanbul, in addition to multimedia projects and impact media campaigns, which influence global discussions and solutions. Mariam has received numerous international awards, including the USA Social Impact…
More Information
XU Heqian
Xu Heqian is a Senior Editor for International News and a member of the Editorial Board of Caixin Media, specializing in analyzing and reporting geopolitical dynamics, China’s foreign policy, and cross-straits affairs. He has a long-standing interest and curiosity in historical, cultural, identity, and ideological factors in international affairs. At Caixin Media, Heqian and his colleagues are committed to broadening communication channels between Chinese readers and plural international perspectives. They try to provide the most unbiased possible foreign affairs reporting to Chinese society whose influence is increasingly spreading beyond China’s borders, and to enrich readers’ understanding of global affairs amid the complexity of the ideological and narrative struggles. Heqian grew…
More Information
Laura-Kristine Krause
Laura-Kristine Krause is Founding Director of More in Common Germany, an organization devoted to understanding the forces that are driving our democracies apart and to countering “us vs. them”-narratives. She also serves on the organization’s international executive team, alongside her colleagues from France, Poland, the UK, and the US. Laura is a leading expert on polarization and social cohesion and an advisor to key civil society organizations, initiatives, and political institutions. She also applies this lens to her role on the oversight board of Germany’s largest public broadcaster ZDF and her board roles in German philanthropy and public administration. She was a negotiator for the coalition treaty of the German…
More Information
Roba El Husseini
Roba El Husseini is an investigative journalist who has published in-depth reports from the Middle East – Syria, Lebanon, Iraq – and Afghanistan. She is currently serving as Bureau Chief in Iraq for the French news agency AFP. Roba has spent more than a decade covering war-torn Syria and crisis-hit Lebanon, relaying breaking news and resulting human tragedies. She has reported on numerous military operations launched by various actors in Syria. As a war correspondent, she has also deployed multiple times to cover key battles against the Islamic State group in Mosul, Raqqa, and the jihadists' last stronghold of Baghouz. She has published investigations into the extortion of property from those displaced by the Syrian war; the primitive…
More Information
Leon McCarron
Leon McCarron is a writer, broadcaster and trail designer from the north of Ireland. In the past decade, he has travelled over 30,000 miles by human power, including walking across China, crossing the Empty Quarter desert on foot, and riding on horseback across Argentine Patagonia. Most recently he followed the river Tigris from source to sea. Leon works at the intersection of journalism and exploration. The slowness and immersion of his projects – reporting at 3 miles per hour – emphasizes the interconnectedness of stories at a local level, and how together they speak to the big issues of our time. As a trail developer, he specializes in creating hiking…
More Information
Andrei Kureichik
Andrei Kureichik is a Belarusian playwright, director, publicist, and civil activist. As a writer and director prior to 2020, Andrei was especially beloved for his comedies and suspense thrillers. Following the contested presidential elections and brutal aftermath in Belarus in August 2020, Andrei gained an international following as a political playwright. Forced to flee the country as a member of the Coordination Council working with perceived winner Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya’s transition team, Andrei leveraged his creative energy to produce the documentary play “Insulted. Belarus(sia)” about the 2020 presidential elections, subsequent protests, and violent crackdown by Alexander Lukashenko’s regime in Belarus. The play has been translated into 29 languages and received 200…
More Information
Maxim Trudolyubov
Maxim Trudolyubov is Editor-at-Large at Vedomosti, a Russian business daily, and he is a Senior Fellow with the Kennan Institute where he writes The Russia File blog and oversees special publications. He also writes a weekly column in Russian on societal and institutional change in Russia and the former Soviet Union. He has anchored a talk show on the radio station Echo of Moscow and is regularly invited to comment for various news outlets in Russia and other countries. Previously, Maxim was Editorial Page Editor and Foreign Editor for Vedomosti, Editor and Correspondent for the newspaper Kapital, and a translator for The Moscow News, an English-language online newspaper. Maxim won…
More Information
Beatrice Mategwa
Beatrice Mategwa is a broadcast journalist with Pan-African experience currently covering South Sudan, a country where a sudden eruption of conflict in mid-December 2013 cast a shadow on the potential for positive growth. In her job at the United Nations Mission in South Sudan, where she heads an Audio Visual team of videographers and photographers, her expertise lies in how conflict impacts communities. Beatrice previously worked in Sudan, covering the North-South Peace deal, before a referendum led to the split of the country and the formation of South Sudan. She was Producer and Head of Television for the United Nations Mission in Sudan from 2005 to mid-2011. In this capacity,…
More Information
James Kondo
James Kondo is Chairman of the Board of the International House of Japan, a nonprofit funded by the Rockefeller Foundation that promotes cultural exchange and intellectual cooperation between the peoples of Japan and other countries. James is also President of Asia Pacific Initiative, Co-Chair of World Economic Forum Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution Japan, Co-Chair of Asia Society Japan Center, Co-Chair of Silicon Valley Japan Platform, Visiting Professor at Hitotsubashi University, Visiting Professor at Keio University, and Senior Advisor at Geodesic Capital. Previously, James was Vice President of Twitter Inc. and Chairman of Twitter Japan, Special Adviser to the Cabinet Office of the Government of Japan, on the faculty…
More Information
Raheel Khursheed
Raheel Khursheed has 15+ years of experience helping global tech firms grow exponentially. In very short periods of time, he has helped launch some of the world’s most popular tech firms in some of the world’s toughest markets. Currently splitting time between Toronto, Boston, and Kashmir, Raheel is the co-founder of Laminar, a 21st Century Streaming/Video infrastructure OS/platform. Prior to Laminar, Raheel successfully co-founded Anthro.ai, an AI X Anthropology startup that specializes in supercharged insights at scale. Anthro.ai continues to deliver high quality research projects to a select set of global clients. Before taking the entrepreneurial route, Raheel led Snapchat in India as their sole expert guiding the integration of…
More Information