Monica Garnsey is an Executive Producer in TV Current Affairs, specialising in international and hostile environment projects, currently working on films for October Films, BBC Current Affairs and PBS Frontline. She has directed numerous observational documentaries and current affairs films for the BBC and Channel 4 in the UK, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Gaza and elsewhere. She was awarded an Emmy for BBC’s Death in Tehran, an Amnesty International Media Award for Execution of a Teenage Girl (BBC) and a RTS Award for Help Me Love My Baby for C4.

Christopher Hird is a graduate of Oxford University, where he studied Politics, Philosophy and Economics. He worked as an investment analyst in the City before becoming a journalist, working on the Economist, New Statesman and Sunday Times. He had a career in television as a reporter and producer before establishing Dartmouth Films, an independent documentary company. A leading figure in the UK documentary community, he was Chair of the Sheffield International Documentary Festival and the founding chair of the Channel Four BRITDOC Foundation. A former trustee of Index on Censorship, he is currently also a trustee of the Grierson Trust, the Wincott Foundation and the Centre for Investigative Journalism.

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.

Derren Lawford is currently Creative Director at Woodcut Media. He was previously at London Live, where as commissioner he oversaw a dozen documentaries working with the industry’s brightest new directing talent. He was also responsible for creating, commissioning and acquiring shows for Raw, an experimental late-night zone which gave TV debuts to a host of YouTube stars. Prior to that, as Head of Content at Livity he worked with Channel 4, Google and the Department of Health, and has also been an advisor to multi-millionaire YouTuber, Jamal Edwards. As Head of Programming & Scheduling at BBC Worldwide’s Global iPlayer, he helped launch in 16 territories, and in a distinguished decade at the BBC he worked as a digital executive producer on the award-winning documentary series Our War for BBC Three, was Panorama’s first multiplatform editor, and as a development producer helped to secure a raft of commissions for BBC Three Current Affairs.

With over 30 years’ experience in broadcasting and many awards under her belt, Flora is always on a mission to uncover and mentor new talent, and to bring stories made by local filmmakers around the world to an international audience. She conceived and ran Channel 4’s long running Unreported World, and was the founding commissioning editor of Witness, Al Jazeera English’s flagship documentary strand which transmitted to 280 million homes worldwide. Since leaving, she has run workshops for BBC Media Action with Libyan filmmakers, and acted as a mentor for IDFA Academy, East Doc platform, EsoDoc, Docs in Thessaloniki (with the EDN) and Medimed in Sitges. She is the Director of Global Short Docs Forum, and an Executive Producer and a mentor for the One World Media Fellowship.

Bruno has worked at VICE since 2007 and became the Editor of the UK edition of VICE Magazine in 2012. He is also the Managing Editor of VICE Magazine’s international editions. He has worked on numerous independent publishing projects and has judged several awards, including BJP’s Breakthrough Awards and Magnum/Photo London’s Graduate Awards.

Born in Melbourne, Australia and schooled in the UK, Jezza Neumann then went to a college of higher education to study business studies.  After completing this course he travelled the world for 3 years and on his return started in the television industry working as a runner for Catalyst Television on the Chelsea flower Show for BBC 2.  After various jobs with various companies he progressed from runner to Production Manager and in January 1996 joined True Vision Productions. 

Having a passion for Stills photography he took a keen interest in camera work and editing and over the years he honed his skills in those areas.  His first broadcast filming opportunity came with Eyes of Child as the hours required “hanging” with the families meant that the budget couldn’t carry a fully fledged Cameraman.  Since cutting his teeth on that production he hasn’t looked back, working under the guidance of multi Emmy and BAFTA winning director, Brian Woods.

China’s Stolen Children was his first film as director, and won three British Academy Awards.  He has since followed up on this success with a number of award winning films including the feature length War Child and the multi-award winning Zimbabwe’s Forgotten Children. More recently his film, Poor Kids, had an incredible impact, leading to questions being asked in the House of Commons during Prime Minister’s Question Time and inspiring over 950 viewer comments on the BBC Blog pages, over double the previous record number.

Dominique is an Executive Producer in international documentary and factual programming. For many years she was Senior Commissioning Producer for the Witness, the observational documentary strand on Al Jazeera English, executive producing programming from Africa and the Middle East with an emphasis on developing young, regional documentary makers. She was also International Executive Producer at Zinc Network, a production and communications company specialising in social change campaigns, overseeing all international filmed output for online platforms.

Christine Garabedian is a Beirut-born Dutch-Armenian-Lebanese freelance film-maker based in London. She has made Documentaries, Current Affairs, Investigative and Factual Programmes for a range of broadcasters and specialises in films about the Middle East and Arab World. Since 2012 she has developed, filmed, written, edit-produced, directed and Executive-Produced films for BBC Arabic’s Close-Up series. Her latest film, ‘Goodbye Aleppo’, tells the story of the final days of the battle for East Aleppo in December 2016. The film won the 2017 Grierson Award for Best Current Affairs Documentary, and the 2017 Rory Peck Sony Impact Award. In June 2017 Christine won a New Ground Award from the International Press Council and the Next Century Foundation for her work on Syria, Yemen, and the Arab Uprising.

Jamie Welham is a producer/director and former newspaper journalist. Most recently he has worked on the Channel 4 documentary strand Unreported World. His latest documentary Africa’s Perfect Storm, following the aftermath of last year’s devastating mudslide in Sierra Leone, has been nominated for an RTS award. Previously he spent several years working with Ross Kemp filming in challenging locations for his Extreme World strand for Sky, as well as one off specials including Libya’s Migrant Hell, following the migrant journey through Libya and The Fight Against ISIS and documenting the Kurdish struggle for autonomy in northern Syria.

Ingrid Falck is an independent media consultant and freelance executive producer of global documentaries. Until recently she was Head of Documentaries at Al Jazeera English for several years, overseeing award-winning strands (Witness, Correspondent, Al Jazeera World etc), series and single documentaries from around the globe. She has nearly 30 years’ broadcast experience, including as a BAFTA winning director and a multi-award winning exec and commissioner. Her special interest is in understanding narrative and exploring meaning, messaging and semiotics in documentary storytelling, especially films about the majority world. She has worked with dozens of filmmakers to help shift the power-base of storytelling away from an ‘us and them’ approach and towards those who are agents and authorities in their own stories. She is currently writing a book on this subject. 

Rageh Omaar is ITV’s International Affairs Editor, where he is responsible for covering and providing analysis of major news stories across the world. He is also the presenter of On Assignment, ITV’s current affairs programme and he also anchors News at Ten. Rageh was previously a correspondent for the BBC, where he covered the second Gulf war from Baghdad and he won a Bafta and Royal Television Society Award for the BBC’s coverage of the invasion of Afghanistan, where he was the only western correspondent in Kabul with the Taliban when the city fell. He then left to report and present for Al Jazeera. He has also reported for Channel 4’s Dispatches.

Karen Wightman is an investigative journalist and executive producer, who is currently the Deputy Editor of the BBC’s flagship current affairs series Panorama. Most recent credits include the RTS winning Undercover: Britain’s Immigration Secrets, which exposed chaos, incompetence and abuse in a centre which is a staging post for detainees who face deportation from the UK and the BAFTA winning Teenage Prison Abuse Exposed, an investigation into the treatment of children and young people at the Medway Secure Training Centre.

Indy Vidyalankara is the founder of boutique music PR company Indypendent PR and currently Head Of Strategic Communications at music charities Help Musicians UK and Urban Development. She is a seasoned and accomplished former Sony Music Director Of Communications, Saatchi & Saatchi ad exec and PR specialist. With a career spanning two decades in comms in some of the most high profile companies including eleven years in publicity across BBC Radio 1, BBC Radio 1Xtra with some of the biggest names in TV and radio, across some of the most loved television shows on the BBC, such as Strictly Come Dancing, The Voice UK, Children In Need, Eurovision, Comic Relief and The One Show.

Mohit Bakaya is Commissioning Editor, Factual, at Radio 4.

He takes lead responsibility for current affairs, politics, history, science, natural history and religion on Radio 4.  

He joined the BBC as a production trainee and worked on the Radio 4’s arts programme, Front Row, before becoming editor of Night Waves on Radio 3. He has also produced many documentaries for Radio 4 and Radio 3.

Angus set up Ronachan Films to help foster a tradition of documentary filmmaking of passion and commitment. His work has been shown and broadcast across the world – winning BAFTA, EMMY, RTS, IDA, PEABODY, COLOMBIA JOURNALISM and PRIX EUROPA Awards among many others.

See a selection of Angus Macqueen’s work.

Bec Evans is Head of Video Development at Dazed; she works across Dazed Media’s publications to direct, produce, programme and commission in conjunction with editorial and commercial teams. Bec’s productions champion diversity and queer identity. She is dedicated to supporting new talent through platforms such as the ICA’s STOP PLAY RECORD, festivals, industry awards and community projects. Previously Bec has worked on documentary productions for Netflix, Channel 4, the BBC, ITV and Al-Jazeera as well as developing films in collaboration with El Colegio Del Cuerpo, Colombia and The Annenberg Foundation, LA. Exploring socio-political issues through the lens of art and creativity has always been Bec’s focus in order to keep enjoyment and education synonymous, and push social responsibility as easy and necessary.

Alex Hoffman is Head of Video at VICE UK, managing the documentary films and series across the network. Prior to this Alex was Head of Music, managing VICE’s music channel Noisey from launch and before that spent nine years at MTV, a tenure that included winning an NME Award for ‘Gonzo with Zane Lowe’ and running the rock and indie channel MTV2

VICE and Noisey UK have won a series of awards for its groundbreaking content, including most recently at the Digiday Media Awards where they won Video Team of the Year.

As a director, Alex has made a number of documentaries including ‘Hip Hop in the Holy Land’ which was hosted by Mike Skinner, the controversial feature ‘The Redemption of the Devil’ and films about the likes of Liam Gallagher, Skepta and seminal clubnight Bugged Out.

Sally Arthy has worked for Sky News since 2000 covering foreign news. She has worked in various roles for the company as is now the Deputy Head of International News. She spent 5 years running the Washington DC bureau and has travelled extensively on some of the world’s biggest news stories often in conflict zones and hostile environments.

Sally started her career in local radio and TV in the UK before joining the Associated Press. Born in London, Sally enjoys running and keep-fit.

Matt is a Senior Foreign News Editor at Sky News, responsible for the day-to-day management of the network’s award-winning foreign news teams around the world. Hereturned to Sky in 2012 as Senior Foreign Planning Producer after working for World Newsgathering at the BBC, where he spent time at the World Service and as Special Events Producer.

Stephanie DeGroote is a Senior Producer at Sky News dealing with innovation, specials and long form content. She has been involved in Sky’s Ocean Rescue campaign, producing documentaries to highlight the problem of plastics in the ocean, activism to save our seas, and exploring solutions. Stephanie has worked at Sky News since 2004 and previously worked for ABC News in London and in Moscow covering conflict and regime change. She has won three Emmy awards, a Peabody, an Overseas Press Award, and spent a year in Ann Arbor, Michigan at the prestigious Knight-Wallace Fellowship for journalism.

Chloe Gbai serves as the POV Shorts & Streaming Producer where she works to increase POV’s streaming viewership and, in 2018, launched POV Shorts, which earned POV it’s third documentary short Oscar nomination. Prior to her work in public media, Chloe was an inaugural member of Teen Vogue’s video team where she worked as a writer/producer, launching two online news shows for the brand, which were viewed over 28 million times in the first six months it was released. She received her B.A. from New York University’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study and as a filmmaker, her work has appeared on Teen Vogue, HBO, VH1, Logo TV and been chosen as a Vimeo staff pick. She is a New York native and proud to say that she grew up on channel 13, WNET. 

Laurence has worked at the Guardian for over 10 years. He was initially
an in-house video producer, working across a wide-range of international news stories, documentaries, interactives and investigations. He has won multiple awards for his work – including Firestorm, Fast Ice and Building the Bomb – and has filmed in places such as Antarctica, the Arctic, West and East Africa, the Middle East, Australia, and all across the United States. Laurence is currently a Special Projects Editor and oversees many of the Guardian’s in-house documentaries and multimedia projects – such as The Trap, The Tower Next Door and Beyond the Blade.

Janine Gibson is an assistant editor at the Financial Times. Previously she was Editor-in-Chief of BuzzFeed UK, running the news team in London and overseeing all editorial content from September 2015 to January 2019. Under her editorship the team won News Website of the Year at the 2017 UK Press Awards. Prior to BuzzFeed, she was deputy editor of the Guardian, most notably launching The Guardian US in 2013 and overseeing its Pulitzer Prize–winning reporting of the Edward Snowden leaks. Her other roles at The Guardian included Media Editor and Editor of theguardian.com.

Shanida is an award-winning commissioning editor and Executive Producer, working across documentary film, podcasts and audio. Her work spans Asst. Multimedia Editor at The Guardian, commissioning and acquiring short documentary films and audio series for one of the world’s most read and trusted English language news sources. Prior, Shanida was part of the STORYVILLE team, the BBC’s flagship feature documentary strand. Shanida developed and produced AFTERWORDS, an audio series that puts the ideas of great writers in dialogue with contemporary writers, academics and activists, for Falling Tree Productions and BBC radio.

Judy Kibinge is a writer and filmmaker who began her career in advertising. She walks a fine line between fiction and documentary. In 2013, she founded DOCUBOX, East Africa’s first homegrown film fund which supports a growing community of talented,  independent filmmakers with funding, workshops, screenings, community space and hugs.

Solomon Mugera is the BBC’s Head of Journalism for Africa. He oversees the managerial and editorial direction of 12 BBC Africa language services, Digital and TV programmes with a combined weekly audience of nearly 100 million. He leads an award winning team that’s spread across various locations in Africa and London. Solomon has been instrumental in transforming BBC Africa from being a heavily radio focussed broadcaster to a multimedia operation. Over the past three years, he led the expansion of BBC Africa following new funding by the UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office. The expansion, the biggest since the 1940s, has delivered six new language services, enhanced digital development, investment in seven new TV programmes and the establishment of two multimedia production studios in Kenya and Nigeria. Solomon is a Kenyan journalist with more than 25 years of experience in broadcasting. He holds a MA in Media Management.

Arthur Pratt is a Sierra Leonean filmmaker and community leader based in Freetown, Sierra Leone. Arthur is a co-founder of the Sierra Leone Film Council, the country’s first media-makers’ union. He has started and leads multiple community film and theater groups, collaboratively writing and performing films and plays. He is a co-founder and manager of the WeOwnTv program in Sierra Leone with numerous credits and awards for the films and plays he has produced. Film credits include; SURVIVORS (2018, Co-Director) which was broadcast on the PBS award winning series POV and was nominated for Peabody and Emmy awards in 2019, Charity (2010, Writer, Director), which revived festival awards at the Pan African Film Festival Los Angeles, Cinema by the Bay San Francisco, Semana del Cine Experimental de Madrid, Black Sugar (2011, Director, Writer, Camera), They Resisted (2011, Director, Writer), Hustler (2011, Director, Writer, Camera), Gift of My Eyes (2012, Filmmaker, Editor), M’Pora (2012, Camera, Editor).

Rawya Rageh is an Amnesty International Senior Crisis Advisor tasked with investigating and documenting war crimes and human rights abuses in crises. Prior to that, Rageh was a journalist for 15 years, covering the Middle East and Africa for the Associated Press and Al Jazeera English. Her work included covering the aftermath of 9/11 in the Middle East, the Iraq War, the conflict in Darfur, the Arab Uprisings and their aftermath, as well as the impact of the violence by the African armed groups, Boko Haram and AlShabaab.

Kate Holt is an award winning photojournalist; having trained in the News and Current Affairs department of the BBC before becoming a photographer. She has extensive experience of telling stories from very challenging environments. Kate has taught a wide range of organisations how to take photographs, write stories and improve their communication skills from African Union soldiers on the frontline in Mogadishu, to children in South Sudan.

Elena Horn is an award-winning documentary filmmaker from Berlin. Her films have appeared on The Guardian, BBC, The New York Times, ZDF, Youtube Originals and the French-German cultural channel ARTE, among others. Elena’s films focus on questions around education, working culture, reconciliation after genocide and climate change employing visual inspirations from the world of choreography and music. As a director, Elena is a fellow of the Logan Non-Fiction Program in New York. Together with Alessandro Leonardi, she was selected for the BBC Fresh Award for her debut documentary “Generation in Transit”. In 2018 Elena attended the Global Short Doc Forum and maintained a close connection to the organisation ever since.

Kiana is an Iranian-Canadian photojournalist based out of Kabul, Afghanistan. Her projects often explore complex topics such as migration, adolescence, identity and sexuality in war-ridden countries. She is a Senior TED fellow and a regular contributor to The New York Times.

Ruona Meyer is an Emmy-nominated, multimedia journalist with 17 years’ experience, across print, radio, wire agency, TV and digital outlets across Nigeria, South Africa, and the UK. She is currently a PhD candidate at De Montfort University, Leicester, UK, researching the construct of networked power within African-Diaspora investigative journalism networks. Ruona’s investigative documentary Sweet Sweet Codeine gave Nigeria and the BBC World Service its first Emmy nomination (2019), winning the One World Media Television Documentary Award category and The BBC News Award for Investigation of the Year in June 2019. As a media trainer and consultant, Ruona works mainly with nonprofits; her most recent clients include the Rosa-Luxemburg Stiftung and UNESCO.

Zoe Flood is an independent journalist and filmmaker with over 15 years experience. Her work ranges from covering breaking news events such as the ouster of Robert Mugabe and the Westgate shopping mall attack to producing long-form, multi-platform investigations. Most recently, she shot, produced and directed ‘Gamblers Like Me’ for BBC Africa Eye, which looks at the dark side of sports betting across Africa and was shortlisted for Best Documentary in the British Sports Journalism Awards. She was also part of the team that won the BAFTA for Best Single Documentary in 2016 for ‘My Son the Jihadi’. In a brief detour from her factual work, Zoe recently co-produced and executive produced the Zimbabwean romantic comedy ‘Cook Off’, which was the country’s first ever feature film to be acquired by Netflix. She also served as Chair of the Foreign Correspondents’ Association of East Africa for two years, and is an elected Board member of the Frontline Freelance Register.

Nyasha Kadandara is a Zimbabwean director and cinematographer. She focuses on visually documenting a broad spectrum of subjects including breaking news, climate change, education, migration, health, and conflict in various parts of Africa. Nyasha holds a master’s degree in journalism and documentary filmmaking from Columbia Journalism School.

In 2015, she directed the award-winning documentary “Through the Fire” which premiered at DOC NYC and won the Audience Choice Documentary Short Award at the Atlanta Docufest. Her short documentary “Queens & Knights” won first prize at the 2016 NBC Sports film contest Cptr’d and premiered at South by SouthWest Film Festival. In 2019, she wrote, filmed and produced “Sex and the Sugar Daddy” an extensive multimedia piece on transactional sex relationships in Kenya which was a finalist for the One World Media Awards in the Popular Feature and Digital Media categories. Her virtual reality documentary, “Le Lac” premiered at the 2019 Sheffield Doc/Fest and won the Best Digital Narrative Award, and currently on the festival circuit recently selected for the Hotdocs Film Festival in Canada.

Most recently, Nyasha directed the feature broadcast documentary “Imported for my Body” for BBC Africa Eye. She also serves as secretary of the Foreign Correspondents Association of East Africa where pushes for press freedom and curates monthly documentary screenings.

Mustafa Khalili is a multi-award filmmaker with 20 years experience in an ever changing media landscape. He is a cross-platform storyteller that has overseen many complex edits. He has a passion for news and current affairs, with a proven track record of building award-winning teams that specialise in producing the most compelling high-impact documentary investigations from some of the world’s most hostile environments for TV and digital platforms.

Mustafa currently oversees Russia and China investigations for BBC Eye investigations unit.

Sasha Djurkovic is a BAFTA nominee and Grierson and RTS award-winning director/producer and has been making observational documentaries for the UK and international broadcasters since 2005. She has a strong background in negotiating difficult access and maintaining long-term relationships with contributors. For the past 15 years Sasha has been directing and shooting award-winning television series for UK and international broadcasters such as: Brain Doctors and Protecting Our Children for BBC2, Our Drugs War and Liberty for Channel 4 and The People’s Health for Al Jazeera. Alongside this work, Sasha has also made her own independent film, Playing the Fool, shot over 3 years in a mental health hospital, which premiered at HotDocs in Toronto and Zagreb Dox Festival.

Toni Kamau is the youngest female African documentary producer to be invited as a member of the Academy for Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences – Documentary Branch, class of 2020. As a creative producer, director and founder of “We are not the machine Ltd”, a Kenyan based production company, she tells stories of outsiders, rebels and change makers.

Her past credits include half hour documentaries for Al Jazeera, MTV Europe and BBC Africa.  The Sundance special jury prize winner “Softie”, produced by Toni and directed/produced by Sam Soko, premiered at Sundance in 2020 in the World Cinema Documentary Feature Competition. “I am Samuel”, directed by Rory Peck 2019 winner Pete Murimi is her second feature as producer, and it recently had its world premiere at the 2020 edition of Hot Docs, to strong reviews. She is currently in production on a documentary feature exploring home and belonging and in development on a series that tackles decolonizing narratives about the global South.

April Dembosky is the health correspondent for KQED Public Radio and a regular contributor to NPR. She specializes in covering altered states of mind, from postpartum depression to methamphetamine-induced psychosis to the insanity defense.

Her investigative series on insurance companies sidestepping mental health laws won multiple awards, including first place in beat reporting from the National Association of Health Care Journalists. She is the recipient of numerous other prizes and fellowships, including an Edward R. Murrow Award for sound design, a Gracie and SPJ award for long-form storytelling, and a Carter Center Fellowship for Mental Health Journalism.

Dembosky reported and produced Soundtrack of Silence, an audio documentary about music and memory that is currently being made into a feature film by Paramount Pictures. Before joining KQED in 2013, Dembosky covered technology and Silicon Valley for The Financial Times of London, and contributed business and arts stories to Marketplace and The New York Times. She got her undergraduate degree in philosophy from Smith College and her master’s in journalism from the University of California, Berkeley. She is a classically trained violinist and proud alum of the first symphony orchestra at Burning Man.

Rehad Desai started out in the film and TV business by producing and directing inserts for currents affairs shows over 20 years ago, garnering the necessary TV hours to take on more ambitious projects in 2000 he began producing and directing documentaries and his focus since then has been investigative, socio – political and historical genres. 

He has a Masters degree in history from Wits University. His prolific output has recently garnered him an Honorary Research Associate position at the University of Johannesburg. He is a fellow of the AVEA producer programme and has a post graduate diploma in documentary development and production from Eurodoc.

Rehad is known for his uncompromising approach both to TV and cinema, his directorial work has been critically acclaimed locally and internationally and is one of South Africa’s most awarded filmmakers. Awards include an International Emmy and two wins for best documentary at One World, Prague. His 2014 title Miners Shot Down garnered a total of 28 prizes. He has several SAFTAs for his drama and documentary work

He is a green fields producer par excellence and is famed for his ability to build multiple partnerships around his films not only among donor bodies but perhaps more importantly through co-producing among fellow producers and international broadcasters. This signals one of his stand out strengths so critical to filmmaking, the art of collaboration.

Roli is a Mumbai-based journalist with the Thomson Reuters Foundation and reports on gender, health, migration and slavery in supply chains, focusing mainly on India’s marginalised communities. In a career spanning over two decades, she has worked with major Indian newspapers including The Hindu where she was Deputy Editor and The Times of India where she was Editor, Special Projects. Her investigations have won her the Fetisov Journalism Award, Laadli Media and Advertising Awards for Gender Sensitivity and a nomination for journalist of the year in Drum Online Media Awards. She was a speaker at the Global Investigative Journalism Conference, Hamburg, and is a guest faculty at media schools.

Rachael is the Head of East Africa for the BBC World Service. She leads the BBC’s largest bureau outside of the UK in Nairobi Kenya. She led the corporation’s expansion in the East and Horn of Africa. She’s currently leading the digital transformation of output produced in the region, providing editorial and strategic leadership to teams producing multimedia content, in six languages across several countries in the region. Prior to this, Rachael was the Editor of the BBC’s flagship radio programme Focus on Africa, where she spearheaded the introduction of digital production, that enabled the development of @BBCAfrica into a key digital brand. Rachael joined the BBC World Service as a producer in 2002 and has worked across various platforms and programmes including Network Africa, The World Today, Focus on Africa TV and the website bbcafrica.com.

She was born in Uganda and her career in journalism started as a freelance contributor to Ugandan newspapers and radio stations whilst a student at Makerere University. An alumna of the prestigious BBC News Leadership Development programme, Rachael also speaks on the future of journalism in a digital-first world and African audiences. She holds a BA in Mass Communication from Makerere University Kampala, and an MA Public Communications from the University of Westminster London.

Peter is a multiple award-winning Kenyan documentary director/producer focusing on hard-hitting social issues. His feature-length documentary I Am Samuel (2020) tells the story of a gay Kenyan man’s struggle for acceptance and has been shown at more than a dozen film festivals, including Hot Docs, BFI and Human Rights Watch.

Murimi has led numerous investigations for BBC Africa Eye including The Baby Stealers (2020), which exposed a child trafficking syndicate and led to multiple arrests, and Suicide Stories (2019), for which he won the Rory Peck News Features Award. He has made films in 30 African countries for major media outlets including Al Jazeera and Channel 4 News. His first major win was the CNN Africa Journalist of the Year Award for his intimate film about Female Genital Mutilation among his Kuria community, Walk to Womanhood (2004).

Oyiza is a US-based Nigerian journalist & broadcaster with over 25 years experience in television production, news reporting/hosting, photography, media & artist management. She founded Africa-Related in 2008, an Africa-focused media and content development company. She also founded Ita’i Our Cloth, a weaving social enterprise that gives indigenous women a voice. Oyiza is currently producing her first feature documentary film on renowned artist El Anatsui.

Kiran is the founding director of the Coalition For Women In Journalism, a worldwide support organisation for women journalists. Kiran is a long-time journalist and worked as a war correspondent covering the Middle East, South Asia and Mexico among many places. She is also a Distinguished Professor at Brandon University, in Canada.

Christina is a Danish-Filipino journalist based in London. She recently joined Sky News as a senior foreign news editor, bringing with her many years of international news experience. Before Sky, she helped set up and restructure newsgathering operations at NBC News, Vice News and Euronews. She also worked at Al Jazeera English in London and Doha.

Christina is particularly interested in films that take you places and allow the people on the ground to tell their own stories. These are the projects that can create a connection across the globe. Her favourite deployment was to Greenland where she was left in awe of the stunning nature. It also taught her about the value of silence in Greenlandic culture. With family across the globe, she’s as comfortable eating shrimp on a beach in the Philippines as she is cycling the streets of Copenhagen. 

Benon is the Africa Editor for Global Investigative Journalism Network. He is an Ugandan multimedia journalist, a co-founder of The Watchdog, a centre for investigative journalism in his home country, and a member of the African Investigative Publishing Collective. Benon has served as a reporter and editor in The East African, Daily Monitor, and The Observer newspapers. He’s also had work stints at the Reuters news agency’s sub-Saharan Africa Bureau in Johannesburg, South Africa and the BBC world service radio’s Newsday programme in London, United Kingdom.

As a freelance writer, Benon’s work has been published in The Africa Report, Africa Review, Mail & Guardian Africa, Mongabay, and ZAM magazine. His work has been recognised three times on the African continent as winner of the 2008 Akintola Fatoyinbo Africa Education Journalism Award (First Prize, English category), the 2011 CNN-MultiChoice African Journalist of the Year Award (Tourism category) and the Thomson Reuters’ 2011 Niall FitzGerald Prize for Young African Journalists.

Maxim is a Berlin-based British journalist and an editor at Bellingcat. Before he joined the award-winning open-source investigative team in 2020, he worked as an editor for several independent media outlets, including openDemocracy, Global Voices and OCCRP.

A specialist on eastern Europe and Eurasia, his reporting from the region has since appeared in The Atlantic, Foreign Policy, The Guardian and Haaretz among other publications. In 2017 he was awarded a fellowship from the Bosch Stiftung to report on Turkish soft power and the politics of memory in the Balkans.

Maxim has also reported widely on refugee rights and multiculturalism across Europe, from Tajik dissidents in the EU to the humanitarian crisis in Bosnia, Crimean Tatar exiles in southern Ukraine, and the political economy of Europe’s border-industrial complex. His most recent dispatch was from Hanau, Germany, on the aftermath of one of the country’s worst acts of far-right extremism in recent decades.

Oyiza is a Nigerian journalist & media personality whose vast experience in the industry spans over 25 years to include television production, news reporting, photography, TV hosting, media and artist management. She was born into a media family, and is the daughter of veteran media icon Tom Adaba. Before founding her New York/Lagos-based media and content development company Africa-Related in 2008, Oyiza had drawn media and production experience from Multichoice (DStv) in Nigeria, South Africa; and as the US Correspondent for AIT International’s New York Bureau covering African news throughout the western hemisphere. She has produced commissioned/independent content for various media and corporate organizations including Multichoice Africa, CNBC Africa, DStv Africa Magic, UNtv, Trim Communications, AIT, Ben TV, Nigeria Info FM, Lagos State Tourism, South Africa Tourism, Cross Rivers Tourism etc. Oyiza is a firm promoter of African arts & culture, and of women/community-driven initiatives. Above all, the adventurous traveler who enjoys music and meeting people is passionate about and motivated by using media tools to tell authentic African stories. She is currently producing her first feature film on the life and works of world-renowned artist El Anatsui.

Nino is a Georgian documentary film director and editor now based in Tbilisi, Georgia. She graduated with a bachelor degree of Social Studies (Journalism) from Tbilisi State University in 2009. During 2008-2012 she worked as a reporter and journalist at various media publishers, but as her interest in artistic storytelling had broadened, in 2012 together with her friends she founded a production company Cinemark, Tbilisi. In 2014 her first feature length documentary Madonna was premiered at Vision Du Reel, and later in 2017 her second feature The Thing was premiered and awarded at Jihlava International Film Festival. In 2018 she graduated from an international joint master degree in documentary film directing – DocNomads, and after completing her internship at the Moon Embassy (Artistic collective based in Berlin), she moved back to Georgia. Since then she has been teaching at GIPA, working on various projects as a scriptwriter, storytelling consultant, editor, and also developing her own film project.

Dina is a media entrepreneur and a bilingual journalist from Egypt. In August 2020, she launched Egab (egab.co), a media startup to help young journalists from across the Middle East and Africa publish stories in regional and international media outlets. Egab specialises in solutions journalism and so far has helped journalists from Libya, Sudan, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Gaza, Nigeria and Kenya get their first by-lines in international media outlets like Al-Jazeera English, DW, The New Humanitarian and The National. For some journalists, these by-lines were their first ever. Before launching Egab, Dina was a senior journalist at the BBC, where she spent 14 years covering the political, socio-economic, cultural and media developments in the MENA region. She also had a brief stint of 1.5 years specialising in covering jihadist activity across the world with a focus on their media operations, during which she produced several data-led pieces. When she’s not busy running her startup (and running after two kids), Dina would be giving talks and training sessions to journalism students and media practitioners about solutions journalism and diversity and inclusion in the industry.

Chibuike is a Health Journalist at Nigeria Health Watch, a health communication and advocacy organization based in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital. His writing focuses on highlighting efforts that are tackling public health challenges in Nigeria. He also writes thought leadership articles that provide insights to health sector actors in Nigeria and supports the Nigeria side of the Solutions Journalism Africa Initiative as Program Manager.

Sam is a documentary filmmaker based in Nairobi, Kenya. With his captivating approach to socio-political storytelling, he has developed content and collaborated with firebrand artists worldwide. His first feature documentary project, Softie, a story about balancing the deep love of country with the family’s needs, premiered at the 2020 Sundance film festival, winning a special jury prize for editing. Soko has gone on to receive Emmy, Peabody, and PGA nominations for His work. He is an outspoken defender of freedom of expression and has taken part in global conversations on making media matter when the world is on fire. Soko is also co-founder of LBx Africa, a Kenyan production company that works with local and international filmmakers to bring uniquely African perspectives to global audiences.

Julia is a visionary, ambitious and innovative filmmaker with a passion for telling intimate and surprising stories that challenge prejudice, build bridges between people and question structures and injustice in our society – with a special focus on climate justice. She has won more than 25 international awards as a documentary director, producer and impact producer, and is the co-founder and CEO of Differ Media together with director Julie Lunde Lillesæter. In 2016 Julia Dahr was listed by Forbes as one of the top 30 under 30 year olds ‘driving and defining the world of media’.”

Dickens is a Kenyan journalist working for the BBC, and an alum of the John S. Knight journalism fellow at Stanford University. His interest is in using new technology for storytelling and integrating the public in the news reporting process. He has been a speaker at several journalism conference around the world on several topics including: constructive journalism, drones for news, podcasting and user-centred design thinking. He also runs The Dickens Olewe podcast where he interviews guests on media, politics and technology in Africa.

Katie is an award-winning producer/director who makes documentaries for Channel 4’s Unreported World, BBC’s Our World and Al Jazeera’s 101 East. After a six month placement on Channel 4’s investigative journalism training programme in 2014, Katie spent three years in Myanmar working as a freelance journalist for CNN, The Guardian, Al Jazeera and Reuters. She was among the first journalists reporting from Bangladesh as hundreds of thousands of Rohingya fled the genocide in Myanmar’s Rakhine State. She covered the crisis for six months and helped to produce the BAFTA award-winning documentary Myanmar’s Killing Fields. Katie now covers human rights issues across Asia and the Middle East, and her film The Yazidis’ Secret Children won the 2020 One World Media Award for best television documentary.

Sharon has more than 25 years’ experience in the television industry, working for several Australian television broadcasters and joining Al Jazeera’s Kuala Lumpur Bureau in 2006. As the Executive Producer of 101 East, she has produced more than 350 half-hour films from across Asia. In that time, the programme has won scores of prestigious awards including the Royal Television Society award, The Wincott Award, 2 Walkleys, 3 Emmy Nominations, Venice TV Award, Human Rights Press Awards, New York Festivals International Television & Film Awards, a Peabody nomination, the World Media Summit Award and The Asian Television Awards.

Sam spent 20+ years in TV Production at the BBC, independent and international production houses. Her final role was as SVP Scripted Production, NBCU International Studios, working with and across a global network of production companies across development, financing, production and delivery of award winning content for both domestic and international networks. Sam also lends her broad experience and skillset as a Non Exec Director.

Alongside Sam’s commercial practice, she is an annual mentor for Women In Film and TV, and Media Parents Back to Work scheme. She has served as Chair of the High End TV Levy Council (£3m annual fund), and on the board of Creative Skillset from 2016-2018, been a visiting Lecturer on the Producer’s MA at MefFilm London, and is a Governor in both state and private schools.

Sam is also a senior practitioner accredited (EMCC) Executive Coach in Leadership, and works with leaders and organisations across all sectors, from charity and creative industries to start ups and tech.

Eliza joined CNN in February 2021 as editor of the award-winning global gender inequality project As Equals. She began her career working for international development and environmental NGOs but has spent over a decade in media, working at The Guardian, The Bureau of Investigative Journalism and, most recently, member-funded platform The Correspondent where she was managing editor. In 2016, Eliza founded The Nzinga Effect, a media project focused on telling the stories of African and Afro-descendant women. She’s a contributing author to Africa’s Media Image in the 21st Century, published by Routledge, and a guest lecturer at IULM in Milan.

Horia is a filmmaker and commissioning producer at Al Jazeera English, based in Doha. She has been with the channel since 2012. Horia’s films include A Marrakech Tale, Paris: Voice of the Suburbs, When Time Stopped at Sea, East End Undertakers, Undocumented and Under Attack and Out of Sight in Kashmir. She is interested in multi-layered, non-judgmental and impact-driven films that explore global issues through personal narratives.

Irwin is the Asia editor at The New Humanitarian, covering stories about crises and emergencies across Asia and the Pacific. He is a multimedia journalist and editor who has lived and reported in Asia since 2009. Before coming to The New Humanitarian, he filed print, radio, and multimedia stories as a freelance correspondent and worked closely with local journalists from around the region.

Ruona Meyer is a freelance journalist, researcher and media trainer with over 18 years of experience across Africa, the UK, the Netherlands and Germany. She specialises in solutions journalism training and DEI consultancy for Africa-focused grants and donor organisations. In 2018, she was commissioned by the BBC to work on investigations into pharmaceutical drug cartels in Nigeria. Her television documentary Sweet Sweet Codeine was nominated for an Emmy in 2019. This was the first time a Nigerian film and the first time a BBC World Service production was nominated for the United States’ most prestigious television award. Since 2020, she freelances as an Editor for Netherlands-based ZAM magazine’s Africa investigations desk, and recently began reporting on sociopolitical issues for Germany-based RiffReporter. Ruona is currently studying for a PhD in investigative journalism at De Montfort University in Leicester, UK, and is also responsible for Africa outreach on behalf of the Solutions Journalism Network.

Nevine Mabro is a commissioning editor for Channel 4 having previously worked as Head of Foreign News for Channel 4 News. From Syria, Somalia to South America, Nevine’s work has been awarded a raft of coveted accolades during her tenure, including two International Emmys for news coverage, a BAFTA and countless RTS Awards. She led the programme’s Aleppo coverage with Syrian filmmaker, Wa’ad al-Kateab, which garnered international acclaim, amassing more than 400 million views online alone.

Frenny Jowi is a journalist based in Nairobi and roaming the world in search of stories. She was nominated Kenyan Reporter of The Year in the 2014 Annual Excellence in Journalism Awards. She is also the co-founder and curator of Kenya Media Week, a programme that promotes freedom of press and debates on contemporary journalism and media matters. The programme has been adopted in Uganda as Uganda Media Week. For three years, she was adjunct faculty at the Aga Khan Graduate School of Media and Communications where she taught courses in mobile journalism, digital media and public relations. She worked for the School in Kenya, Tanzania, Zanzibar and Uganda. Recently Frenny took up a data journalism project at Transparency International Kenya where she mentors young investigative reporters. Frenny worked for the BBC World Service in London and Nairobi as a reporter and producer for four years.

Mustafa Khalili is a multi-award filmmaker with 20 years experience in an ever changing media landscape. He is a cross-platform storyteller that has overseen many complex edits. He has a passion for news and current affairs, with a proven track record of building award-winning teams that specialise in producing the most compelling high-impact documentary investigations from some of the world’s most hostile environments for TV and digital platforms.

Mustafa currently oversees Russia and China investigations for BBC Eye investigations unit.

Samira Shackle is a multi-award-winning freelance journalist based in London, who has reported extensively from Pakistan and around the world. She writes long-form journalism that focuses on the human impact of major world events and is a regular contributor to the Guardian Long Read. Her first book, Karachi Vice, is a work of narrative nonfiction that tells the story of five ordinary citizens in Pakistan’s largest city. Described by the Mail as “a brilliant portrait of a complex place”, it was a Radio 4 Book of the Week.