Focus: Media/Journalism
Sharmila Nebhrajani
Sharmila Nebhrajani has had a varied career that spans medicine, business, and the media. She currently serves as Chairman of the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) and is responsible for producing evidence-based guidance to support the clinical and cost effectiveness of medical interventions in the UKâs National Health Service. She was previously Chief Executive at Wilton Park, an executive agency of the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office convening international dialogues for senior policy makers from around the world involved in tackling the most pressing issues in global affairs. She also spent 15 years at the BBC, latterly as Chief Operating Officer for BBC Future Media & Technology….
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Belabbes Benkredda
Belabbes Benkredda is an award-winning social innovator and the founder of the Munathara Initiative, the Arab worldâs largest online and television debate forum highlighting voices of youth, women, and marginalized communities. Today, Munathara operates in 11 Arab countries and counts a community of some 170,000 members on its online debate platform. Its monthly prime time TV debates are the only civil society-run, independent political talk programs on Arabic television, syndicated across several channels. Previously, Belabbes held roles in the German Foreign Office, the League of Arab States, and the Council for Arab-British Understanding. After moving to Dubai in 2005, Belabbes became a government consultant specializing in public diplomacy in the…
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Ahmed Albasheer
Ahmed Albasheer is an Iraqi comedian, journalist, director, and host of The Albasheer Show, a weekly political satire program that humorizes Iraqi politics. Heavily influenced by comedians Jon Stewart and George Carlin, Ahmed began the show in 2014 as a tool to fight corruption, sectarianism, extremism, and terrorism in Iraq and the surrounding region. Having been banned from Iraqi television station, the show is recorded in Jordan and Turkey and broadcast weekly YouTube, Facebook, and Deutsche Welleâs Arabic channel. It reaches a weekly audience of over 7 million people, the majority of whom area under age 30. Ahmed was born and raised in Anbar, Iraq, fleeing the country in 2011…
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Stephanie Busari
Stephanie Busari is Senior Editor for Africa at CNN Worldwide. She heads up CNN's Nigeria bureau where she pioneered CNN's first digital and multiplatform bureau. She also reports on-air for CNN International and led the network's 2019 Nigeria presidential election coverage. Stephanie oversees CNN Africa's digital editorial and operational strategy, crafting a new narrative for Africa and chronicling the continent's changemakers and innovators. In April 2016 Stephanie exclusively obtained the âproof of lifeâ video that showed that the missing Chibok schoolgirls were still alive. This video kickstarted crucial negotiation talks with Boko Haram that led to the eventual release of more than 100 of the kidnapped schoolgirls. She was also…
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Wolfgang Proissl
Wolfgang Proissl is a journalist and Head of Communications and Chief Spokesperson for the European Stability Mechanism, an international organization founded by the 17 Euro-area member states whose purpose is to provide financial assistance to member countries in difficulty. Previously, he reported and wrote on monetary policy, international finance, and the financial crisis for the Financial Times Deutschland (FTD). As a journalist, he worked to promote European integration and was responsible for defining the editorial line on European affairs and global governance for the FTD and its affiliated news magazines. Through the FTD, he advocated for a stronger European Union, less energy dependence on Russia, EU membership for Turkey, and…
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Onur Burçak Belli
Onur "Burçak" Belli is a Syrian-Turkish journalist. For most of her career, Burçak has focused on conflicts in Turkey, where she has been based for the past five years, working for Die Zeit, a German weekly newspaper, covering conflicts and crises in Turkey and the broader region. With 13 years of experience writing for international media outlets, her reporting is often through a lens of comprehensive rights and freedoms, writing in feature, long-form, or non-fiction storytelling styles. In 2010, Burçak was based in Damascus covering Syriaâs reform plans and the Sunni-Alawite divergences amongst the ruling elite. She then moved London, working for the BBC as a broadcast journalist, before returning…
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Garentina "Tina" Kraja
Garentina "Tina" Kraja is an independent researcher and consultant on issues ranging from transitional justice to violent extremism and malign influence. She advised Kosovoâs President Atifete Jahjaga (2011-2016) on foreign policy and security issues and lectured at R.I.T. Kosovo on religion and globalization, international relations, and politics. She started her career as a journalist covering the war in Kosovo, initially for Koha Ditore, Kosovoâs first independent newspaper, and later as a correspondent for The Associated Press for nearly a decade. Tina was one of the first journalists to report on the emergence of the rebel Kosovo Liberation Army and extensively documented war crimes during the war. As the war intensified,…
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Dayo Olopade
Dayo Olopade works at the intersection of media and technology, with more than a decade of content, strategy, product, communications, partnerships, contracts, and change management expertise. As Partnerships Lead at YouTube, she structures and negotiates product and licensing deals with video storytellers–major TV broadcasters and cable networks, sports leagues, movie studios, digital native publishers, and fresh, individual voices. She gets to do this across Africa, where the content industry is dynamic and creative problem solving is fundamental. Dayo began her career as a reporter in Washington covering politics, policy, and the Obama administration. She spent two years in Nairobi as a New America Foundation fellow, reporting The Bright Continent, a…
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JIAN Yi
JIAN Yi is an independent filmmaker and food activist. In 2008 he founded the IFChina Original Studio, a citizen participatory media project, and he founded the Good Food Fund in 2017, which leads in promoting transforming China's food system transformation. They also run a Good Food Summit and a Good Food Festival in China every year. Yi's films have won international awards and shown at numerous venues across the globe including New York's MoMA. He made What's For Dinner? in 2009, the first China-made short documentary on meat consumption and its impact on the environment. He also co-founded the Food Forward Forum with Yale Hospitality in 2019. Yi has spoken/taught…
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Aboubakr JamaĂŻ
Aboubakr JamaĂŻ has been the Dean of the Institute for American Universities School of Business and International Relations since 2014. Aboubakr's professional career spans the business sectors of finance, economics, and journalism. As a professor, he teaches political science and international journalism at IAU and other American institutions of higher education. Among the many prizes and distinctions he has received, he was named Harvard Universityâs Nieman Fellow in 2007 and Mason Fellow in 2008. He was also awarded the 2008 Tully Center Free Speech Prize, Newhouse School of Communication, Syracuse University, and the International Press Freedom Award from the Committee to Protect Journalists. In 2016 he was honored by the…
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