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Tanzil Asif is an Indian journalist and founder of the Bihar-based hyperlocal news platform, Main Media. His work includes video reporting and writing on a wide range of issues, including politics, climate change, systemic development, and the marginalization of minorities, with a particular focus on Bihar’s Seemanchal-Kosi region. He has contributed to outlets such as Al Jazeera, The Hindu, The Wire, The Quint, Outlook Magazine and BehanBox. In 2021, he was selected for YouTube’s Creator Program for Independent Journalists, and Main Media was part of the inaugural Google News Initiative Startups Lab India. In 2023, Asif led a media literacy initiative under DataLEADS’ FactShala Innovation Lab, and, in 2024, he was awarded a fellowship by the Internews Earth Journalism Network (EJN). With support from EJN, he led a workshop and fellowship program for 45 rural journalists and content creators.

Ana Brakus is the executive director of Faktograf, a Croatian non-profit that publishes a fact-checking website and The Climate Portal, a website on climate-related misinformation. Her career has spanned roles as a reporter and editor at weekly newspapers and digital portals. Her investigative work has focused on the historical and contemporary influence of global ultraconservative movements on the political and civic landscape of Croatia and the wider region. Since joining Faktograf in 2018, Brakus transitioned from managing editor to executive director, overseeing strategy and international partnerships, as well as research on the systemic harassment of journalists. A twice-elected member of the European Fact-Checking Standards Network Governance Body, she develops resources and resilience strategies for independent newsrooms across Europe.

Anastasiia Carrier is a public health and safety reporter at Charlottesville Tomorrow, where she covers Central Virginia and topics ranging from youth mental health access and the decline of rural maternal healthcare to the community’s fight against gun violence. She is the Pulitzer Center’s 2026 Mental Well-Being in the U.S. Reporting Fellow, examining the impact on maternal well-being of a rural hospital’s closure of its labor and delivery unit. Carrier grew up in Russia and moved to the U.S. for college. Prior to her current work, she covered online radicalization, the war in Ukraine and the misinformation and criminal operations of Russia’s Wagner Group. Her work has appeared in POLITICO, Insider, PassBlue and Al Jazeera.

Libby Casey is an independent visual and audio journalist and guest anchor of NPR's national newscasts. She was most recently The Washington Post's news anchor and a senior manager on its video team. During her nine years at The Post, Casey hosted and produced streaming coverage of elections, conventions and space launches, and led 12 hours of live coverage of the January 6th, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol. She launched The Post's first vodcast, "Sidebar," about President Trump's legal battles and the 2024 campaign. As an editor, Casey oversaw and mentored a team of video journalists producing short-form reported vertical videos, which garnered tens of millions of views across social media platforms. Previously, she was a national television correspondent for Al Jazeera America and a host of C-SPAN's morning call-in program, "Washington Journal." She spent more than a decade as a public radio reporter in Fairbanks, Alaska and Washington, D.C.

Mankaprr Conteh is a Sierra Leonean American journalist who has spent a decade reporting at the intersection of global entertainment and sociopolitical life. Formerly a staff writer on Rolling Stone’s music team, she authored intimate cover stories on pop stars such as Megan Thee Stallion, Janelle Monáe, SZA, 21 Savage, Cardi B and Rema. The latter became the magazine’s first Black African cover subject in its nearly 60-year history. A preeminent voice in chronicling Afropop’s watershed crossover in the West, Conteh was the founding columnist of Rolling Stone’s “Made in Africa,” a monthly examination of the continent’s art, politics and influence. She previously reported for Pitchfork, Vogue, ELLE and Essence.

Allister D’Souza is a documentary producer and multimedia journalist based in Washington, D.C. For more than a decade, he has produced current affairs programs for Singapore’s public broadcaster CNA. Several of his documentaries — on topics such as the 2002 Bali bombings, aircraft grounded during COVID, and Singapore’s minority communities — have won awards in Cannes, New York, Hamburg, and Singapore. D’Souza has reported on a range of subjects, including the impact of AI on the outsourcing industry, the environmental fallout of rare earth mining, the illegal trade in peacock feathers and the geopolitical risks of a war over Taiwan. Originally from India, he has covered stories in the U.S., Canada, Australia, China, India, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Cambodia and the Philippines. D’Souza is also a correspondent for a U.S.-based global news agency that provides coverage to broadcasters including Canada’s CBC News, China’s CGTN, and South Africa’s eNCA. Previously, he worked for Bloomberg TV in Hong Kong and for major Indian networks including NDTV and CNBC TV18.

Lev Facher has worked since 2016 as a journalist at STAT, a leading U.S. outlet for news in health, science and medicine. In 2022, he became the outlet's inaugural addiction reporter, covering systemic failures in government, business and medicine that caused and perpetuated the nation’s addiction and drug overdose crisis. Facher’s investigative series, "The War on Recovery," which highlighted Americans' deadly hostility toward effective addiction medications, won a Gerald Loeb Award for Distinguished Business and Financial Journalism. He has also written extensively about federal health and science agencies, the government's response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the pharmaceutical industry's influence in Washington.

Kristin Fraser is a multi-platform storyteller and producer with a career rooted in rethinking the way people connect with information. She believes that news, at its best, treats consumers as smart and gives them the information they need to make their own decisions. Fraser has managed three national television news bureaus: CNN Seattle, Al Jazeera America Seattle and the VICENews West Coast Bureau and has been on the launch team for a local TV station, a national nightly news show for HBO, a national news network and a Portland documentary collective. She helped produce the podcast “She Has A Name,” which Audible cited as one of the top 20 podcasts of 2024.

Matt Fuchs is a Maryland-based science and health journalist. He is a frequent contributor to Time Magazine, with feature articles also appearing in other national outlets such as The Washington Post, Scientific American, WIRED, The New York Times and Science Magazine. He was editor-in-chief of Leaps, a magazine covering scientific innovation and bioethics, where he hosted a podcast on the making of science. Before working in journalism, Fuchs served as deputy director of disaster resilience policy for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and led research for the Pew Charitable Trusts on climate resilience.

Erica Hellerstein is the senior immigration and labor reporter at El Tímpano, an outlet serving the Bay Area's Latino and Mayan immigrants. Previously, she spent more than a decade reporting on human rights across the U.S., Latin America, Africa and Europe, investigating labor exploitation, gender-based violence, rising authoritarianism and the surveillance state. She won the 2022 Online Journalism Award in Explanatory Reporting for a feature comparing historical reckonings in Germany and the American South. At the center of her work is historical memory: how societies reckon with the past, and how history is wielded as a weapon in modern politics. In 2025, she reported from Ukraine on her hidden family history and how Jewish Ukrainian identity is evolving amid Russia's invasion. She previously reported for Coda Story, the San Jose Mercury News and INDY Week, and her work has appeared in The Washington Post, The Atlantic, The Guardian, ELLE and Marie Claire.

Van Le is an investigative journalist, author and independent documentary filmmaker based in Vietnam. As a reporter for the acclaimed investigative documentary, “The Stringer,” she was the first journalist to track down and interview an unknown stringer photographer who — as evidence in the film strongly suggests — took the famous "napalm girl” photo and did not receive credit. Le has also contributed environmental reporting to ProPublica, authored a book on how Ho Chi Minh City has adapted through historical and cultural transformations, and worked on other documentary films, including “Saigon Story: Two Shooting in the Forest Kingdom,” and “A Price We Have to Pay.” Prior to her freelance work, Le was a feature writer and investigative journalist for Thanh Nien Newspaper, a national news outlet in Vietnam. Her investigation into irregularities in Ho Chi Minh City's school health examination program led to systemic reforms.

Shan Li is the South Asia correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, covering politics, culture and economic issues in India and the surrounding region. She previously served as China correspondent for The Journal, reporting on the global influence of Chinese tech companies and the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic from Wuhan. She is particularly interested in how shifts in global trade and technology affect the developing world. A Texas native, she began her career at the Los Angeles Times as a business reporter covering the retail industry and the California economy.

Nokuthula Manyathi is a newsroom leader and digital publishing strategist who has worked across digital, broadcast and print newsrooms. She was most recently the multimedia editor at News24, one of South Africa’s leading and most trusted news outlets. In 2022, the Online News Association named Manyathi as one of 26 women worldwide driving journalistic innovation. As a reporter, she contributed to investigative work that exposed a Christian cult disguised as a mission station, predatory teachers and sports coaches, and sexual harassment at a South African university. Manyathi holds a master’s degree from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. She is conversational in German and fluent in isiZulu, English and Afrikaans.

Yongha Park is a reporter at The Kyunghyang Shinmun, one of South Korea’s major national newspapers. He has worked at the outlet for more than 15 years, covering issues including politics, social affairs and economic policy. Park participated in some of the newsroom’s first multimedia journalism projects and contributed to major reporting series on topics such as democracy, demographic change and social inequality. From late 2024 to mid-2025, he served as the opposition-party team leader on the political desk, leading coverage of former President Yoon Suk Yeol’s illegal declaration of martial law and the subsequent impeachment proceedings.

Clare Roth is the leader of The Ohio Newsroom, a statewide public radio news service. As the newsroom's founding editor, she designed its flagship program, “Today from the Ohio Newsroom,” which reaches nearly 700,000 listeners weekly. Her team of three provides coverage of news deserts across Ohio with a feature-length story every week day, reporting directly from every one of 88 Ohio counties in the newsroom's first three years. She also coordinates collaborative projects with journalists from the state's eight public media stations. While at Louisville Public Media, she edited "A Critical Moment," a cross-continental audio documentary that contrasted Germany's handling of the Holocaust in classrooms and America's lessons on slavery in its schools. Roth has spent 14 years as a reporter, producer, host and editor at public radio stations across the Midwest. Now, her professional focus is using collaboration to redefine local journalism and rebuild communities' trust and engagement with their local news.

LaCrai Scott is a CBS Evening News producer with more than a decade of reporting experience across the network’s broadcasts and digital platforms. In her current role, she covers breaking news and has reported on the war in Iran, increased immigration enforcement operations throughout the U.S., catastrophic flooding in Texas and the Annunciation Catholic School shooting in Minneapolis. Scott previously worked with 60 Minutes correspondent Bill Whitaker on dozens of investigations, including a look into the influence of Russian oligarch money in London, scientific exploration in Uganda and the deliberate destruction of Ukrainian culture amid the war in Ukraine. Scott also covered the 2020 presidential election as a campaign reporter for CBS News.

Luke Vander Ploeg is a senior audio journalist and podcast producer at The New York Times. He currently serves as a Senior Development Producer, where he has helped launch new series including "The Protocol," a narrative podcast about gender-affirming care for minors. Previously, he spent six years as a producer at "The Daily," the Times' flagship news podcast, producing hundreds of episodes on topics ranging from presidential elections to the pandemic to the legacy of Steven Sondheim. He has also reported for the Times' national desk and helped launch the second season of "The Run-Up," the Times' politics podcast. Before joining the Times, he was part of the founding team of Vox's "Today, Explained" and produced NPR's "All Things Considered."

Rachel Weiner is a journalist with two decades of experience covering policy, politics and the law, both locally and nationally. She spent 16 years at The Washington Post, most recently covering transportation with a focus on pedestrian safety. She was part of the team that reported on the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, work that was recognized with a Pulitzer Prize and a George Polk Award. Her reporting has been cited in judicial opinions, congressional reports and special counsel investigations. She began her journalism career as an editor at Talking Points Memo and the Huffington Post and her writing career doing political analysis for The Washington Post’s “The Fix” blog. A longtime resident of Washington, D.C., she is a native of Brooklyn, New York.

Reid Williams is co-founder and co-director of the Local Journalism Foundation of Kalamazoo County, which publishes NowKalamazoo, a nonprofit civic news service in Southwest Michigan. His work focuses on rebuilding local journalism as a public service by strengthening civic participation, social connection and community trust. His media career spans more than 25 years, beginning in 1999 at the Summit Daily News in Frisco, Colorado. Prior to returning to local news in Kalamazoo, Reid spent 12 years with newspapers owned by Gannett. He served as Regional Digital News Director for the Lansing State Journal, Port Huron Times Herald and Battle Creek Enquirer. He also spearheaded creative initiatives in many leadership roles, such as Senior Director of Gannett's Storytelling Studio, Vice President of Innovation and Product Development at Michigan.com and Senior Director of Development at Gannett's Innovation Lab.