Open and free to all, this summit is an opportunity to listen, learn, and engage with others on issues that affect us all.

Anna-Kynthia Bousdoukou is the Managing Director and co-founder of iMEdD (incubator for Media Education and Development), a nonprofit journalism organization established in 2018 with exclusive support from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF). iMEdD, which is the only internationally oriented journalism institution based in Greece, has as its primary mission supporting and promoting transparency and credibility in journalism.

Since 2016, Anna-Kynthia has collaborated with SNF and other partners on international programs and grants related to journalism while simultaneously serving as Executive Director of the SNF Dialogues initiative, launched in November 2017. The Dialogues, which she curates and coordinates, offer a multimedia platform that encourages the exchange of ideas and highlights the need for us as citizens to communicate and express ourselves on a basis of equality and diversity.

In 2020, she received the Giorgos Karayiannis Journalism and Technology Award for her contributions to the creation and administration of iMEdD, as well as her work for SNF related to the Foundation’s efforts to support high-quality journalism and other projects that benefit society. This distinction was awarded as part of the Athanasios V. Botsis Foundation awards for the Promotion of Journalism.

In the past, she has presented the news and headed a morning television news program. She has also worked as a radio reporter and then as a news editor and producer while writing for various publications.

She holds a degree in Sociology from Panteion University, specializing in the sociology of mass media.

Valerie Biden Owens is the first woman in U.S. history to have run a presidential campaign — that of her brother, Joseph R. Biden, Jr. She also led his seven straight U.S. Senate victories and has been his principal surrogate on the campaign trail.

Today, Valerie serves as Chair of the Biden Institute at the University of Delaware’s Biden School of Public Policy & Administration. She is a partner at Owens Patrick Leadership Seminars. Valerie sits on the Advisory Board of the Beau Biden Foundation for the Protection of Children.

Valerie is the New York Times Bestselling author of “Growing Up Biden.” She is a graduate of the University of Delaware. Valerie is married to Jack Owens, an attorney and businessman. They have three children.

Andreas C. Dracopoulos is Co-President of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF), an international philanthropic organization that has made over 5,400 grants to nonprofits worldwide aiming to achieve broad, lasting, and positive impact for society.

Andreas is a Trustee of The Rockefeller University, Johns Hopkins University, and the Center for Strategic and International Studies, as well as a Board of Advisors Trustee at the New York Public Library. He received France’s rank of the Officer of the Legion of Honor in 2016 and Greece’s Grand Cross of the Order of Honor in 2018.

Andreas was born and raised in Athens, Greece, and graduated from Athens College. He has received a Bachelor of Science degree in Economics from the Wharton School of Business, an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from JHU, and an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Simon Fraser University. He lives in New York City.

Joseph E. Trainor serves as interim dean and professor of policy and administration in the Joseph R. Biden, Jr. School of Public Policy and Administration at the University of Delaware. Trainor is also a core faculty member of the Disaster Research Center, where he has built an international reputation in Disaster Science and Emergency Management.

Adrian Shahbaz is Vice President of Research at Freedom House, where he oversees the organization’s flagship study, Freedom in the World, as well as its global analysis on technology, media, and authoritarianism. Prior to joining Freedom House in 2013, he worked as a researcher at the United Nations, the European Parliament, and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). He holds a master’s degree from the London School of Economics.

Allison Taylor Levine, MPA, is passionate about democracy, journalism and community. Allison is the founder and CEO of the Local Journalism Initiative, whose flagship project is Spotlight Delaware, the first-of-its-kind collaborative nonprofit newsroom. After starting her career as a reporter at several newspapers, Allison spent 20 years in various communications and community leadership roles in Delaware, including 12 years as vice president for marketing and communications at the Delaware Community Foundation. Allison is a nationally recognized expert on civic engagement, philanthropy, and the role of media in building democracy, community, civil discourse and social capital.

Ana Paula Valacco is the Community Manager of JournalismAI, an initiative of Polis, the journalism think tank at the London School of Economics (LSE). She holds a Master’s degree in Journalism, Media, and Communication from Cardiff University. With a background in political science and journalism, she has worked in Marketing at Google Argentina and as the Institutional Development Coordinator at Chequeado, a pioneering and globally recognized fact-checker. Additionally, she serves as the ambassador in Argentina and director of Project Oasis Global at SembraMedia, an organization that helps independent digital media leaders build stronger institutions and develop sustainable business models.

Athan Stephanopoulos currently serves as an advisor to various AI technology companies working at the intersection of media and entertainment. Most recently he was EVP and Chief Digital Officer of CNN Worldwide, where he oversaw all the areas of the global digital business, including: editorial, product development and technology, business operations and innovation strategies. He joined CNN after more than eight years as president of NowThis, where he led the brand to become one of the largest and fastest growing digital news outlets for a Gen-Z and Millennial audience. Previously he was the Founder and CEO of Cliptamatic, a social video distribution platform that was acquired by NowThis in 2014. He has served as an Adjunct Professor at Fordham University’s Graduate School of Business in NYC, where has taught courses on Media Entrepreneurship and Social Media.

Carole Cadwalladr is an investigative journalist, feature writer and founder of the non-profit The Citizens. In 2019, she was a Pulitzer finalist for her role in breaking the Cambridge Analytica/Facebook scandal in the Observer and New York Times.

Dan Froomkin is a trailblazer in the area of online accountability journalism with more than two decades of experience building, editing and contributing to websites including the Huffington Post, The Intercept, and the Nieman Foundation’s Watchdog Project. Over 12 years at the Washington Post, he served as Editor of the website and wrote its enormously popular White House Watch column. He is currently editor of Press Watch. He teaches at New York University’s American Journalism Online master’s program. He began his career at the Winston-Salem Journal, the Miami Herald, and the Orange County Register.

Danai Maragoudaki is based in Athens and works for the investigative outlet Solomon. She started working as a journalist in 2015 and has worked for several Greek media outlets, such as Inside Story and Capital.gr. Her reporting focuses on transparency, media, and cybersecurity. She has studied political science and translation.

Danilo Yanich is Professor of Urban Affairs & Public Policy and Faculty Affiliate with the SNF Ithaca Initiative in the Biden School, University of Delaware. His research and teaching focus on the nexus among media, citizenship and public policy. His book entitled, Buying Reality: Political Ads, Money and Local Television News, (Fordham University Press, 2020) compared Presidential and Down Ballot races in battleground states during the 2016 campaign. With Knight Foundation funding he and UD faculty member Benjamin Bagozzi are now examining the effect of media consolidation on news content. They have created the largest broadcast news database in existence.

Dhanaraj Thakur is Research Director at the Center for Democracy & Technology, where he leads research that advances human rights and civil liberties online. He has been interviewed and his work quoted in several news media, including WIRED, CNN, the WSJ, the Economist, and the Guardian (UK). In addition, he has published over 50 peer reviewed journal articles, book chapters, and conference papers. He holds a PhD in Public Policy from the Georgia Institute of Technology, and graduated from the London School of Economics and the University of the West Indies (Jamaica).

Dimitris Bounias is an Athens-based journalist. He served as Head of Video/Executive Producer at VICE Greece and formerly as a contributing reporter with the New York Times. He has worked as a producer for various media such as the BBC, CNBC, Al Jazeera English and NPR. He studied Mechanical and Aeronautics Engineering but was quickly drawn to journalism, currently pursuing a degree in Media & Communications from Panteion University.

Douglas Brinkley is the Katherine Tsanoff Brown Chair in Humanities and Professor of History at Rice University, a CNN Presidential Historian, and a contributing editor at Vanity Fair. He has received seven honorary doctorates in American Studies.  He works in many capacities in the world of public history, including for boards, museums, colleges and historical societies.  Six of his books were named New York Times “Notable Books of the Year” and seven became New York Times bestsellers.

Eliza Triantafyllou is an investigative journalist based in Athens. She reports mainly on financial and business issues. She works for Inside Story, an independent online media outlet, and is a member of the investigative journalism outfit “the Manifold.” Formerly, she worked for Eleftherotypia newspaper and Capital.gr and has contributed to Vice Greece.

Jonathan Soma is Knight Chair of Data Journalism at Columbia University, where he directs both the Data Journalism MS and the summer intensive Lede Program. He also regularly publishes free and open tutorials on everything from basic Python and analysis to ai2html and machine learning.

In the past, Soma has made maps, processed data, and crowdsourced stories with organizations such as ProPublica, the Associated Press, and The New York Times. He currently focuses on helping under-resourced newsrooms make responsible, ethical use of artificial intelligence.

Jordan Klepper is perhaps best known for his work with The Daily Show and his multiple Emmy nominated specials focusing on the political world. From covering the gun safety debate (Jordan Klepper Solves Guns) to his docuseries on the world of activism (Klepper on Comedy Central) Jordan has witnessed an insurrection, capsized a boat with pipeline protestors, interviewed a President and been arrested and locked up in Fulton County Jail. He also travels the globe with his segment “Fingers The Pulse” which has racked up hundreds of millions of views.
Klepper wrote, starred and executive produced “Jordan Klepper Fingers the Pulse: Into The MagaVerse,” “Fingers The Midterms” (the most watched special on Comedy Central) and “Hungary for Democracy,” the latter of which garnered him a Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in TV Political Journalism. He executive produced and hosted “The Opposition” and “Klepper” on Comedy Central, which was called “A fresh, powerful interpretation of news” by the Detroit Free Press.
In addition to being a correspondent on the Peabody Award Winning Daily Show for nearly a decade, and co-hosting this election year, he’s branched out into the podcast space co-hosting StarTalk with Neil deGrasse Tyson, co-hosting Kasich and Klepper (with former Governor John Kasich) as well as the Webby award winning “Fingers The Conspiracy” which took a deep dive into the world of conspiracy. Beyond his work in comedy, Klepper has chronicled his experiences in the world of politics from essays on CBS Morning to Op-Ed’s in the Boston Globe. He’s also been seen on CNN, MSNBC, Showtime’s “The Circus,” HBO’s “Night of Too Many Stars,” Netflix’s “The Who’s Who Show” and voices Pete on Disney’s “The Ghost and Molly McGee.”

Jennifer Lambe is an associate professor in the Communication Department at the University of Delaware, and an affiliated faculty member with the SNF Ithaca Initiative in the Biden School of Public Policy & Administration. Lambe received her Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota in 2000. Her research and teaching focus broadly on free expression, media and democracy.

Jessica Yellin is the founder of News Not Noise, a pioneering Webby award-winning independent news brand. Over 1M+ subscribers and followers across Instagram and other digital media rely on Jessica and News Not Noise to understand what matters, which experts to trust, and to manage their “information overload.” She is the former chief White House correspondent for CNN and an Emmy, Peabody and Gracie Award-winning political correspondent for ABC, MSNBC and CNN. Follow her on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @JessicaYellin. You can also find the News Not Noise Newsletter on Substack.

John Avlon is a candidate for Congress in New York’s First District, spanning eastern Long Island. Until announcing his campaign as a Democrat earlier this year, he was a CNN anchor and senior political analyst, known for his award-winning “Reality Check” segments. Previously, he was the Editor-in-Chief and managing director of The Daily Beast. He is the author of books including Independent Nation, Wingnuts, Washington’s Farewell and most recently Lincoln & The Fight for Peace, which was named one of the best of the year by Vanity Fair and Foreign Affairs.  During the attacks of 9/11, he was chief speechwriter for the Mayor of New York and wrote the eulogies for fallen firefighters and police officers. He is a graduate of Yale University with an MBA from Columbia University. The father of two children, he is married to Margaret Hoover, the host of Firing Line on PBS, and lives in Sag Harbor, New York.

Kelly Kiki has been working in the Press and media industry since 2007. She worked in print journalism, she was responsible for the Social Media strategy and content of news online publications and she has contributed to digital projects in the field of education and culture. Before joining iMEdD, she worked as a Senior Data Analyst for almost two years; she was trained in data journalism by attending the post-bac Lede 12 program at the Columbia Journalism School in New York in 2018 under a full scholarship offered by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation. She is a graduate of the Department of Communication, Media & Culture of Panteion University of Athens and she holds a Master’s degree in “Digital Media and Interactive Environments” by the Faculty of Communication & Media Studies of the National & Kapodistrian University of Athens.

Louise Riondel is the Co-Secretary to the Council of Europe’s Committee on Artificial Intelligence. She is a lawyer and political advisor in the Digital Development and Governance Department, and previously served in the organisation’s Criminal Law and Counter-Terrorism Division and in the Group of States against Corruption (GRECO), as well as in the Drugs and Criminal Organisations Sub-Directorate at Interpol. Louise also worked as the Assistant Director of Corporate Investigations and Security for Wynn Resorts. She holds a master’s degree in International Relations from Sciences Po.

Margaret Hoover is the host of PBS’ “Firing Line with Margaret Hoover,” a public affairs, multi-platform program that engages in long-form interviews and a rigorous exchange of ideas with the guiding principle that civil discourse is a civic responsibility.

A CNN contributor, Ms. Hoover has served in The White House under President George W. Bush, in the Department of Homeland Security, on Capitol Hill and on two presidential campaigns. She is the President of American Unity Fund, a political organization focused on achieving full freedom and equality for LGBT Americans. A bestselling author, her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Daily News, The Daily Beast, CNN.com and FoxNews.com.

Ms. Hoover serves on the boards of Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, the Hoover Presidential Foundation, the Belgian American Educational Foundation, The Markle Foundation, and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Raised in Colorado, Hoover has lived in China, Mexico, Bolivia, and Taiwan, speaks fluent Spanish, and studied Mandarin Chinese. Ms. Hoover lives in New York City with her husband John Avlon and their two children.

Martín Carcasson, Ph.D., is a professor in the Communication Studies department of Colorado State University, and the founder and director of the CSU Center for Public Deliberation (CPD). He focuses on helping local communities address “wicked problems” more productively through improved public engagement, community problem solving, and collaborative decision-making. In the fall of 2022, he helped launch the Northern Colorado Deliberative Journalism project, working with CSU’s Journalism and Media Communication department, local media outlets, and community organizations to reimagine local journalism through a deliberative lens focused on elevating community capacity to address their shared problems.

Michael G. Kane has worked in the media industry for 42 years, the last 32 with Gannett and the USA TODAY Network. Now based in Greenville, DE, Kane has held many local, regional, and corporate leadership roles in eight different markets over the span of his career. He has been a strong champion for community partnerships, business development, media literacy education, local journalism advocacy and leadership mentorship. He is the proud recipient of many career award honors, including a lifetime achievement award, but he’s thrilled most by being the father of four terrific adult children.

Mike Nelson is a senior fellow in the Carnegie Asia Program. He helps decision makers around the world understand and address the impacts of emerging technologies, such as digital technologies, biotechnology, and machine learning. Prior to joining Carnegie, he started the global public policy office for Cloudflare. Nelson has also served as a principal technology policy strategist in Microsoft’s Technology Policy Group. In addition, Nelson has taught courses on the future of the internet, cyberpolicy, technology policy, innovation policy, and e-government in the Communication, Culture, and Technology Program at Georgetown University. Nelson spent 9 years as director of Internet technology and strategy at IBM, where he managed a team helping define and implement IBM’s Next Generation Internet strategy. From 1988 to 1993, he served as a professional staff member for the Senate’s Subcommittee on Science, Technology, and Space and was the lead Senate staffer for the High-Performance Computing Act. In 1993, he joined Vice President Al Gore at the White House and worked with President Bill Clinton’s science adviser on issues relating to the Global Information Infrastructure.

Morgan Malone is City Bureau’s Executive Director. With a strong background in administrative operations, city government, inclusive placemaking, and economic development, Morgan has experience in community-driven partnerships, complex systems change, organizing and advocacy, and social impact program design.

Nic is Executive Director at THE CITY, a news outlet serving the people of New York through independent journalism that holds the powerful to account, deepens democratic participation, and helps make sense of the greatest city in the world. He has led news and human rights organizations on three continents, and was previously Deputy Executive Director of Human Rights Watch, Chief Content Officer of Hindustan Times in Delhi, and Editor-in-Chief of South Africa’s Mail & Guardian newspaper.

Nikolas Aronis is a journalist-communication manager with more than 20 years of professional experience in Greece and abroad. He has worked as a journalist in ERT SA, as a cultural editor and editor-in-chief for websites, as a communications consultant, as a marketing manager for the Athens & Epidaurus Festival, and as a New Media and Social Media Manager at the National Theatre of Greece. Moreover, for many years, he maintained cultural columns in daily and weekly Newspapers. He holds a degree in Communications from Coventry University and an MA in International Communications from Leeds University.

Suzanne McBride is a professor of journalism and dean of the School of Graduate Studies at Columbia College Chicago. She also works as an editor at the Chicago Sun-Times and writes editorials and edits commentary for the Editorial Board. The co-founder of two local news web sites in Chicago, she has lectured in Asia, Europe, Canada and the United States. In 2012, she was a Fulbright Scholar in Ireland, where she taught at the Dublin Institute of Technology. She’s also served as a media specialist for the U.S. Department of State in Thailand in 2009, Kuwait in 2021 (virtually) and in Fiji in 2023. She has degrees from the University of Iowa and Northwestern University.

Taylor Owen is the Beaverbrook Chair in Media, Ethics and Communications, the founding Director of The Centre for Media, Technology and Democracy, and an Associate Professor at the Max Bell School of Public Policy at McGill University. He co-founded the Media Ecosystem Observatory and he is the host of the Globe and Mail’s of the Machines Like Us podcast. His work focuses on the intersection of media, technology and public policy and can be found at www.taylorowen.com.