The people of Beta 2024

Digitally Right

Bangladesh

Tamara Yesmin Toma is an OSINT investigator and researcher at Dismislab, specialising in disinformation, hate speech, and gender issues. She has nearly four years of experience in journalism and fact-checking, having previously worked at The Business Standard. Tamara holds a degree in Mass Communication and Journalism from the University of Dhaka, where she received the Ali Riaz Graduate Research Award for her thesis on South Asian gender fluidity.

Women In News, WAN-IFRA

Myanmar

Thandar runs programs for Women In News, WAN-IFRA. She previously served as Country Lead for Myanmar in the past years. Thandar is a marketing and communications professional and previously led a commercial team at Frontier Myanmar, one of the leading media organisations in Myanmar. In parallel, she also led Frontier Myanmar's Black Knight Marketing and Communication Agency, and collaborated with a number of international clients.

Beijing SourceEngine Technology

China

Xin Feng is the founder of Beijing SourceEngine Technology, a media and tech startup delivering AI-powered open-source intelligence solutions for businesses and individuals. An award-winning former journalist and 2018 John S. Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford University, she initially created SourceEngine to address information-gathering challenges in journalism, later expanding its mission to serve a broader range of industries.

Newspack/Automattic

Germany

Kim Bode is an audience and product strategist dedicated to advancing the mission of journalism through impactful and innovative approaches in audience and revenue growth. She currently leads the Revenue Development Program at Newspack. Her career spans a diverse range of product, audience, and editorial roles at organisations like Devex, the Los Angeles Times, and Reuters, among others. Kim has worked as a consultant, coach, and adjunct professor with organisations such as the Media Development Investment Fund, Human Rights Watch, Deutsche Welle Akademie, the BBC, and New York University.

Cofact

Thailand

Mike Raomanachai is a lead trainer for Cofact Thailand, and a journalist with more than 13 years of experience in the media and tech industry. He currently trains journalists with the latest digital reporting tools such as artificial intelligence and online data investigation for Google News Initiative. Before joining the tech industry, Mike was a broadcast journalist at Voice TV in Thailand, covering the tech, business, and lifestyle beats.

Google

The Netherlands

Filip Shen is a News Partner Manager at Google, based in Singapore. He works closely with the news media community across the Asia-Pacific region, more recently with a focus on South East Asia. He leads multiple programs through the Google News Initiative (GNI) to support the digital advancement of the news ecosystem.

ICFJ Knight Fellow

India

Nikita Roy is a data scientist, journalist, and Harvard-recognised AI futurist. She is currently a Knight Fellow at the International Center for Journalists, focusing on AI literacy in the news industry. She leads the AI Journalism Lab and serves on the AI advisory board at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York. Nikita is also the host of the globally acclaimed Newsroom Robots podcast incubated at Harvard Innovation Labs. It has ranked among the top technology podcasts in over 30 countries on Apple Podcasts.

Code for Africa

Italy

Jacopo is a computer scientist who works as Code for Africa’s Senior Strategist. As an ICFJ Knight Fellow in 2016-2019, Jacopo built teams and programs supported by the World Bank, Google News Initiative, GIZ, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. His mix of technical skills, as a computer scientist and data journalist, has resulted in a series of projects published by, among others, The Guardian, Der Spiegel, El País, and Internazionale. He worked on multiple projects supported by the Pulitzer Center and the European Journalism Center. He is a member of the European Press Prize preparatory committee, and a trainer with BBC Media Action.

Rest of World

India

Rina Chandran is a deputy editor at Rest of World. Prior to that, she was Asia tech correspondent at the Thomson Reuters Foundation's Context. Rina was a business journalist for more than a dozen years in India, Singapore, and New York, with Reuters News, Bloomberg and the Financial Times. She is based in Bangkok.

StoryFlow

Canada

David Caswell is the founder of StoryFlow, an innovation consultancy focused on AI in journalism. He was previously the Executive Product Manager of BBC News Labs and has held senior roles leading AI initiatives at Yahoo!, Tribune Publishing and The Los Angeles Times.

The Reporter

Taiwan

Sherry Hsueh-Li Lee is the COO, Deputy CEO and Chief Editorial writer of The Reporter, the first non-profit media in Taiwan established by a public welfare foundation. The Reporter focuses on in-depth reportage and investigative journalism. She is the board of the Environmental Reporting Collective (ERC), a network of journalists dedicated to investigating environmental crimes. She won the Best Editor of the Year Award of Taipei International Book Exhibition for her book Fiery Tides (2020), a book on Hong Kong’s anti-extradition movement. She is also on the faculty at the graduate school of journalism of National Taiwan University.

Jom

Singapore

Sudhir Thomas Vadaketh is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of Jom, a digital weekly magazine about Singapore. His work is focused on amplifying the voices of people marginalised by dominant power structures. His areas of concern are inequality, corporate and political hegemonies, and social hierarchies.

ICFJ Knight Fellow

Italy

Mattia Peretti is a learning experience designer and project manager working in journalism and media. Through his ICFJ Knight Fellowship, he is building News Alchemists, a movement that helps everyone in journalism put people’s needs and curiosity, and the benefit of society, at the centre of everything they do.

The Gathering

Singapore

Hidayah Salamat is the founder of The Gathering, a platform that hosts modern women's circles for radical personal growth and healing. She is also the author of GADIS GILA, a newsletter celebrating the lifestyles and triumphs of the women of the Nusantara. Hidayah has 17 years of experience in the Singapore and regional media industry, and is a seasoned advisor at a Singapore non-profit organisation for women.

Nieman Foundation

Philippines

Jaemark Tordecilla was a 2024 Nieman Fellow at Harvard University, where he focused on studying AI, from its use to improve newsroom production processes to navigating the landmines of the nascent technology as it relates to journalism and the media industry. Prior to the fellowship, he spent nearly a decade as editor-in-chief of GMA News Online, the Philippines' top digital news organisation. His career began in tech before starting his journalism journey at the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism in 2009.

University of South Australia

Sri Lanka

Amantha Perera is a journalism academic, educator, and trainer focusing on building expertise on safe and professional digitally enhanced journalism workspaces. He is a PhD candidate at Creative, University of South Australia. He is the Project Lead at the Dart Centre for Journalism and Trauma, Asia Pacific (a project of the Columbia School of Journalism). Amantha also teaches journalism and narrative writing at the School of Education and Arts, Central Queensland University. His journalism has appeared in TIME, the Guardian, Reuters, Washington Post, and Al Jazeera.

Reframing Disability

India

Priti Salian is an independent Indian journalist and the author of Reframing Disability, a fortnightly newsletter simplifying disability inclusion for content creators. Her work focuses on the intersections of disability, gender, global health and development, with reporting from India, Germany, and Uganda for outlets such as The Guardian, BBC, The BMJ, and The Lancet. As an accredited media trainer, Priti specialises in gender equality, diversity and inclusion, and solutions journalism. In 2022, she was a fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford, where she researched disability inclusion in India’s newsrooms and media coverage.

Digitally Right

Bangladesh

Miraj Chowdhury is the founder of Digitally Right in Bangladesh, focusing on the intersection of media, technology, and society. With nearly 18 years of experience in journalism, research, and media development, he has worked as a regional editor at the Global Investigative Journalism Network and served as an adjunct faculty teaching journalistic research. Miraj is a 2020 GNI-Internews Digital Rights Fellow and sits on the boards of MRDI, Sustainable Journalism Partnership, and What To Fix.

JournalismAI

South Africa

Tshepo Tshabalala is the Manager and Team Lead at JournalismAI, a research and training project run by Polis — the international journalism think-tank at the London School of Economics and Political Science — in collaboration with the Google News Initiative. Prior to joining Polis, Tshepo worked at the Wits Centre for Journalism where he led the Journalism and Media Lab (Jamlab Africa) and has also worked in various capacities for newsrooms such as BusinessDay Wanted Online, BusinessLive, Forbes Africa magazine, and Thomson Reuters. He is a Chevening Scholar and holds an MA in Politics, Philosophy and Economics, and an MA in Journalism.

Scroll

India

Sannuta Raghu heads Scroll.in's AI Lab for News and Journalism. The lab is building Factivo, a versioning tool to repurpose news articles according to the information needs of users. Since 2016, she has built, lead, and scaled Scroll's digital video newsroom, creating news+ products for platforms with between 6 million and 200 million users. She is an ICFJ Knight Fellow and an incoming Reuters Institute Journalism Fellow.

DVB

Myanmar

With 10 years of experience in the field, Sithu, currently at DVB, focuses on creating high-impact digital marketing strategies and optimising social media performance for brands.

The Continent

South Africa

Refiloe is The Continent's production editor and undisputed quizmistress, Badass-in-Chief, and Hoop Correspondent, and has been with the publication since its inception in 2020.

The Standard

Thailand

Dew is a content producer of The Standard knd, the leading Thai bilingual channel with a wide presence on multiple social media platforms like YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok.

The Standard

Thailand

Jom has a background in publishing and a passion for editorial. He drives The Standard’s digital strategy as Digital Platform Manager, and focuses on optimising content and maximising its reach across all channels.

climateXchange

Romania

Dr Carmen Nicoara is an established social researcher and impact evaluation specialist, currently leading research and impact strategies at climateXchange (cXc), Syli’s global initiative designed to advance high-impact climate journalism around the world. At cXc, she helps newsrooms define, deconstruct, and measure the impact of their climate storytelling. With over a decade of experience in education, employment, and community development, Carmen has managed high-profile projects, including the evaluation of the 2012 London Olympics and Paralympics Community Programme and creating evaluation frameworks for cross-border cultural heritage preservation in Syria.

Global Forum for Media Development

Denmark

Anne Marie Hammer is Director of Membership Services at the Global Forum for Media Development (GFMD), the largest international network of journalism support, media freedom, and media development organisations. An expert in media development and journalism support funding, Anne Marie is responsible for the GFMD MediaDev Fundraising Guide and Resource Centre, a sector-specific resource for small and medium-sized media development organisations, and Bottom Line, a monthly newsletter dedicated to media development funding.

Bangkok Metropolitan Administration

Thailand

Pattaramon Tocharoen a.k.a. Bo, a Bangkok street sweeper, is a proud local with a thriving TikTok presence of over 300,000 followers.

Pulitzer Center

Thailand

Vijitra Duangdee is the Southeast Asia Program Manager at the Pulitzer Center, where she brings Pulitzer-supported stories to life through creative campaigns. From art exhibitions to performative dinners and influencer partnerships, she finds engaging ways to share important narratives to new audiences.

The Green Line

Canada

Anita Li is the founder, CEO, and editor-in-chief of The Green Line, an award-winning news outlet in Toronto that delivers community-driven solutions journalism. She also serves as Journalism Innovator-in-Residence at Toronto Metropolitan University. With over two decades of industry experience across North America, she is recognised for her expertise in community-driven journalism, news entrepreneurship, and media innovation.

Gazzetta

Austria

As the founder of Gazzetta, a newly-set up Tallinn and New York-based venture, Patrick Boehler supports media and technology companies at the forefront of internet freedom. This role builds on extensive background in newsroom leadership, editorial strategy, audience research, product development, and digital security for global media organizations navigating challenging environments. Prior to this, he led Radio Free Europe's digital transformation, overseeing product, audience, and marketing teams. He also established an Innovation Lab focused on censorship circumvention and remote reporting technologies, alongside the RFE/RL Academy, a journalism training hub.