Upasna Gautam is the Head of Product & AI Studio at American Journalism Project, where she works to rebuild the local news ecosystem with the responsible adoption of technology. She also serves as Co-Chair, Innovation Council at The Texas Tribune. Prior to that, she worked for CNN and also spent 15 years in the tech industry building technical, data-informed solutions for brands such as Ford Motor Company, Valvoline, PCMag, Mashable, Mars Corporation, and Kimberly-Clark. Upasna is also a Community Lead with Google Women Techmakers, an angel investor, and a freelance writer at CNN.

Zielina’s work is focused on training the next generation of news executives to address the demand for innovation, business sustainability and new leadership in the industry. She is currently the CEO of Better Leaders Lab. Before that, she held various management roles in media organizations who were seeking to transform themselves, such as Chief Product Officer and member of the executive management team at NZZ media group in Switzerland; managing editor and deputy Editor-in-Chief at Stern, the German weekly news magazine published by Gruner + Jahr in Hamburg, and reporter and editor at the newspaper Der Standard in Vienna, Austria. She is an alumna of the Knight Journalism Fellowship at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California; holds an Executive MBA from INSEAD in Fontainebleau, France and a Master in Law from Vienna University.

Elite Truong is the Vice President of Product Strategy at American Press Institute, where she manages data products that help local newsrooms make strategic decisions. API’s mission is to unite communities and uphold democracy through rebuilding trust with local news organizations and supporting news leaders in doing so. She serves as the Board Secretary for News Product Alliance and is on the advisory board for Democracy Day. Formerly, she was the Director of Strategic Initiatives at The Washington Post, where she led the newsroom R&D team to capture younger and more diverse audiences by creating projects driven by emerging technologies, including machine learning, artificial intelligence and 3-D and augmented reality. Before joining The Post, Truong spent four years at Vox Media, three as the product manager for off-platform storytelling, primarily negotiating with tech platforms to create user experiences that benefited news consumers.

Sharon Moshavi is the President of the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ), a non-profit organization that enables a global network of journalists to provide the trustworthy news essential to free and strong societies. ICFJ develops and runs programs for its 177,000+  global network of reporters, editors and newsrooms, supporting them to cover the critical issues of today, innovate to connect more deeply with communities, and build news organizations that thrive. Previously, Moshavi was senior vice president of new initiatives, leading ICFJ’s new project development, innovation and impact. She designed programs to support newsroom transformation, create investigative reporting networks, and mentor emerging media leaders. Prior to ICFJ, Moshavi worked as Communications Manager at the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. For more than a decade before that, Moshavi was based in New Delhi, Jerusalem and Tokyo, reporting from countries across Asia and the Middle East for The Boston Globe, Bloomberg, Newsday, BusinessWeek,  KQED, PRI,  and The New Republic, among others.

Kanhema is a journalist and product manager based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Kanhema has worked as a journalist in Africa and in various product strategy roles in Silicon Valley, recently at Mozilla, where his work with the Pocket and Firefox teams focused on connecting millions of readers with high quality content from a broad range of reputable publishers.

Williams is a data journalist, analyst and visualization expert tackling inequity in data and design. He's a senior visualization engineer in Netflix's Data Science and Engineering group and previously spent a decade as a data and graphics reporter—most recently at the Washington Post.

AX Mina is a strategic consultant and leadership coach with over a decade of global experience in organizational strategy and leadership, technology development, public speaking and media development. They have coached and trained news entrepreneurs and managers through programs with LION Publishers, The Self-Investigation, The OpEd Project, and the American Press Institute. They are a founding board member of the News Product Alliance and a Senior Civic Media Fellow at the USC Annenberg School for Journalism and Communications.

Chi-Chi Zhang is a product leader at the intersection of media and technology. As Senior Director of Product for Machine Learning at Yahoo News, she oversees personalization algorithms. Previously, she led a team at Google at the forefront of expanding AI capabilities for global newsrooms and grew edX.org's Asia business. Chi-Chi's journalism background includes seven years across China, working for CNN, Associated Press, and the Institute of Current World Affairs. A frequent speaker on technology and news, she has presented at events hosted by prestigious institutions and organizations, including the Pulitzer Center and Online News Association.

Jeremy Gilbert is a professor at Northwestern University’s Medill School and the Knight Chair in Digital Media Strategy. His work and teaching focus on the content and emerging technologies like artificial intelligence. He oversees the Knight Lab and explores the intersection of technology and media, examining how new tools and techniques will affect the creation, consumption and distribution of media. He also founded the Data-Driven Reporting Project, the Next Gen News project and is co-directing the Generative Artificial Intelligence for Newsrooms project. 

Patrick Boehler is the founder of Gazzetta, a Tallinn and New York-based media research lab that focuses on autocratic settings. He previously led Radio Free Europe's digital transformation, establishing its audience research, marketing, and product departments, along with its journalism Academy and Innovation Lab. His experience spans executive newsroom roles, award-winning reporting for The New York Times and South China Morning Post, co-founding the Environmental Reporting Collective, and teaching at the University of Hong Kong.