Speaker Bios

Manasseh Azure Awuniis the founding editor-in-chief of The Fourth Estate, a nonprofit, public interest and investigative journalism project of the Media Foundation for West Africa in Ghana. He previously worked as a senior broadcast journalist for Ghana’s Multimedia Group, where he founded and led the organization’s investigative journalism desk. Manasseh’s reporting exposed government corruption that led to the jailing of three people, criminal charges against four others, the cancellation of fraudulent contracts worth hundreds of millions of U.S. dollars and the dismissal of dozens of corrupt officials. His work led to the passage of a law by parliament to regulate the operations of Ghana’s youth employment program after Manasseh uncovered systemic corruption in its implementation. His reporting also resulted in the abolishment of a policy that sent pregnant nursing and midwifery students home until after delivery. His journalism awards include 2012 Ghana Journalist of the Year, 2018 and 2020 West Africa Journalist of the Year, 2021 Integrity Personality of the Year and the 2021 Millennium Excellence Award for Journalism and Media Personality. He is the author of four books, including “Investigative Journalism in Africa: A Practical Manual.”
Twitter: @Manasseh_Azure
Instagram: @manassehazureawuni
Facebook: Manasseh Azure Awuni

Julia Barton is vice president and executive editor at Pushkin Industries, an audio production company based in New York, where she leads a team of editors, develops training sessions and oversees the company’s editorial standards. She has been the lead story editor on several Pushkin narrative podcasts and audiobooks including “The Last Archive,” hosted by Jill Lepore; “Against the Rules,” hosted by Michael Lewis; “Revisionist History,” hosted by Malcolm Gladwell; “Cautionary Tales,” hosted by Tim Harford; “Not Lost,” hosted by Brendan Francis Newnam; and “Into the Zone,” hosted by Hari Kunzru. Barton also is the editor and host of the audiobook anthology “The Best Audio Storytelling: 2022.” A longtime editor and reporter, she has produced pieces for PRI’s “Studio 360,” “99% Invisible,” and “Radiolab,” among other programs. Barton previously worked as a senior editor for PRI’s “The World” and has been a regular contributor to Nieman Storyboard.
@bartona104

Julian Benbow is a sports reporter at The Boston Globe, where he has worked for the past 17 years. He joined the Globe as a sports intern in 2006 after internships at the Naples Daily News, Richmond Times-Dispatch, and The Tampa Tribune. He has covered high school sports, all four professional sports beats in Boston, including baseball, basketball, hockey and football, and everything in between, providing game coverage, features and profiles. He has also contributed occasionally to the Globe’s Living/Arts section, writing commentary on music and culture.
@julianbenbow

Denise Schrier Cetta is a producer and writer for “60 Minutes” at CBS News, where she has covered news events and social issues for over 25 years. Her reporting includes scientific breakthroughs, in-depth profiles, investigations and stories about racial justice and child welfare. Her stories have exposed corporate corruption, led to exonerations, been cited in a congressional hearing and contributed to a peer-reviewed scientific publication. Prior to joining “60 Minutes,” Cetta produced documentaries for Walter Cronkite, Discovery Communications and CNN. She started her career with Academy Award-winning filmmaker Charles Guggenheim. Her work as a journalist has been recognized with top industry honors, including Edward R. Murrow, Emmy, Sigma Delta Chi and The National Association of Black Journalists awards.

Niki Griswold is a City Hall reporter for The Boston Globe, covering the Boston City Council, the Mayor’s office and the politics and policies of local government. She was previously a reporter on the Globe’s Great Divide education team, investigating equity issues in K-12 schools. Prior to joining the Globe in 2023, Griswold worked at the Austin American-Statesman, where she covered state politics . During her time at the Statesman, she was part of the team that was honored as a finalist in 2023 for the Pulitzer Prize in Public Service for their coverage of the Uvalde school shooting. Griswold was also named a 2023 Livingston Award finalist for excellence in local reporting for her stories on the Uvalde community. Griswold began her career at a local broadcast news station in Austin, Texas, first as an associate producer and then as an on-air multimedia journalist, covering everything from local and state politics to public education, and the impact of rapid gentrification. She is originally from the Bay Area, and graduated from Northwestern University in 2018 with a Bachelor of Science in journalism and a minor in political science.
@nikigriswold

Cristela Guerra is a senior arts and culture reporter at WBUR in Boston, a queer Panamanian journalist of color and a moderator who facilitates and leads conversations around race, identity and equity. Before working in public radio, she was a newspaper journalist working at The Boston Globe and The News-Press in Fort Myers, Florida. They’ve covered hurricanes and blizzards; written about breaking news and immigration policy; worked local and state government beats; and consistently uplifted stories of the LGBTQ+ community. Her work received a regional and national Edward R. Murrow Award in 2014 for reporting about a family caring for an ill son and another regional Murrow Award in 2023 for her work at the U.S.-Mexico border on the journey of Venezuelans migrants. She was chosen as a 2019 Latina Leader by Amplify Latinx and selected by YW Boston for the organization’s Sylvia Ferrell-Jones Award and its 2023 Academy of Women Achievers. They are the vice-president of the New England Chapter of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, vice-chair of the board at RAW Art Works and a board member at the cultural community The Jar.
@CristelaGuerra

David M. Herszenhorn is an editor for The Washington Post’s International desk who oversees coverage of Russia’s war in Ukraine and news from the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. He is based in Brussels. Before joining the Post in August 2022, Herszenhorn worked for six years as chief Brussels correspondent for Politico Europe, covering the European Union, European politics and policy, including Brexit, NATO and transatlantic relations. A native of Flushing, Queens, Herszenhorn worked for more than 20 years at The New York Times as a metro reporter and a Washington correspondent, and as a foreign correspondent based in Moscow from 2011 to 2015. He covered Ukraine’s Maidan Revolution. His book “The Dissident: Alexey Navalny, Profile of a Political Prisoner” was published in October 2023.
@herszenhorn

Adriana Lacy is the audience engagement editor at the Nieman Foundation. She also works as a consultant with newsrooms to help grow their digital audiences. In the past, Lacy has worked at newsrooms including The New York Times, Los Angeles Times and Axios.
@Adriana_Lacy

Nicholas Lemann is Dean Emeritus at the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University, (where he served in that role from 2003 – 2013) and is currently the Joseph Pulitzer II and Edith Pulitzer Moore Professor of Journalism. He also directs Columbia Global Reports, a book publishing venture, and served as founding director from 2017 to 2021 of Columbia World Projects, a new institution that implements academic research outside the university. Prior to that, his long journalism career began as a 17-year-old writer for an alternative weekly newspaper in his native New Orleans, and went on to include positions at Washington Monthly, Texas Monthly, The Washington Post, The Atlantic Monthly and The New Yorker, where he began as a staff writer in 1999. He has written widely for a host of additional journalistic publications and documentary programs and is the author of several books. During his time at Harvard College, where he graduated magna cum laude in 1976, he served as president of The Harvard Crimson.

Ann Marie Lipinski, NF ’90, is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and curator of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. She oversees an international fellowship program and an innovative group of publications about journalism, including Nieman Lab, Nieman Reports and Nieman Storyboard. Before coming to Harvard, Lipinski served as senior lecturer and vice president for civic engagement at the University of Chicago. Prior to that, she was the editor-in-chief and senior vice president of the Chicago Tribune, a post she held for nearly eight years following assignments as managing editor, metropolitan editor and investigations editor. As a reporter at the Tribune, Lipinski was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for investigative journalism for stories she wrote with two other reporters on government corruption in Chicago. While editor of the paper, she oversaw work that won Pulitzers in international reporting, feature writing, editorial writing, investigative reporting and explanatory journalism. Lipinski is a trustee of The Poynter Institute for Media Studies and a past co-chair of the Pulitzer Prize board. She is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.
@AMLwhere

Frank LoMonte is newsroom legal counsel for CNN, advising the network’s worldwide team of journalists on the legalities of gathering and publishing news across all platforms. LoMonte came to CNN in 2022 from the University of Florida, where he taught media law and ran the Brechner Center for Freedom of Information, a think-tank about freedom-of-information law. He spent nearly a decade as executive director of the nonprofit Student Press Law Center in Washington, D.C., where he launched the “New Voices” campaign to pass state laws protecting the independence of student newsrooms. A 2000 honors graduate of the University of Georgia School of Law, LoMonte was an investigative reporter and political columnist before becoming an attorney. His work on behalf of open government and journalists’ rights has been recognized with numerous awards, including the American Library Association’s Freedom to Read Foundation Roll of Honor and the National Press Photographers’ Association First Amendment Award.

Ilya Marritz is a reporter who covers threats to democracy for ProPublica and Trump legal matters for NPR from upstate New York. He co-hosted “Will Be Wild,” an audio documentary about the January 6 Capitol riot in 2021 and “Trump, Inc.” an investigative podcast from ProPublica and WNYC that won an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Silver Baton Award. He also was host of “The Season,” a podcast about efforts by Columbia University’s struggling football team to make a comeback. A longtime public radio journalist, his work has also appeared in The New Yorker, Time, The Daily News and New York Magazine. He previously worked as a senior reporter for WNYC in New York covering technology, Wall Street, real estate, retail and small business. His stories have been finalists for the Loeb and IRE awards. He is a past recipient of a Richard Holbrooke reporting grant and a DAAD academic scholarship.
@ilyamarritz

Graciela Mochkofsky is the dean at CUNY’s Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism, where she was previously the executive director of its Center for Community Media, and founding director of its Bilingual Journalism Program. She is a contributing writer for The New Yorker, and the author of seven books of nonfiction, including “The Prophet of the Andes: An Unlikely Journey to the Promised Land” (Knopf, 2022.) She is a recipient of the Maria Moors Cabot Prize for outstanding reporting across the Americas. She was a 2009 Nieman Fellow at Harvard University.
@gmochkofsky

Alan Murray is CEO of Fortune Media (USA) Corporation, where he oversees all of the company’s operations. He writes a closely-read newsletter, the Fortune CEO Daily, and cohosts a weekly podcast, “Leadership Next.” He is the author of five books, including most recently “Tomorrow’s Capitalist:  My Search for the Soul of Business.” Prior to joining Fortune in 2015, Murray led the Pew Research Center.  Before that, he was at The Wall Street Journal for many years, serving as deputy managing editor, executive editor online, Washington bureau chief, and author of the Political Capital and Business columns. He also served for a time as Washington bureau chief of CNBC, and co-host of the network’s “Capitol Report.”
@alansmurray

Betsy O’Donovan is an associate professor of journalism at Western Washington University, where she teaches writing, reporting, editing and media literacy. Her research about how journalists can build trust, civic engagement and cooperation with their communities has been published by the American Press Institute, the Poynter Institute for Media Studies and the Knight Foundation. She has worked in print, broadcast and online media since 1998, and was a fellow at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism from 2012-2013, where she studied writing and media business models.

Andrea Patiño Contreras is a Colombian video journalist and editor based in Boston who explores questions of migration and mobility, as well as gender and sexual violence. Her most recent film, “#IamVanessaGuillen” examines the mental health impact of military sexual violence and was a finalist for a Livingston Award. For the last several years Andrea has worked at Univision Noticias Digital and The Boston Globe producing documentaries and multimedia projects. Her work has been recognized by the Hillman Foundation, the national Edward R. Murrow Awards, the Emmys and the Gracie Awards, among others. She is the co-founder of the media studio Rabbit Raccoon.
@andreapatinoc

Abby Phillip anchors “CNN NewsNight with Abby Phillip,” and was previously CNN’s senior political correspondent and anchor of “Inside Politics Sunday.” She joined the network in 2017 to cover the Trump Administration and served as a White House Correspondent through 2019. In January 2020, she moderated CNN’s Democratic Presidential Debate in Iowa and has been an essential player in CNN’s Special Coverage of a range of political events, including election nights, State of the Union Addresses and the January 6th Committee hearings. Phillip joined CNN from The Washington Post also previously worked at ABC News and Politico. Throughout her career she has covered multiple presidents, campaign finance, lobbying, and several presidential campaigns. She is a graduate of Harvard College and was news executive editor on The Harvard Crimson.
@abbydphillip

Andrew Ryan is a reporter on The Boston Globe’s Quick Strike investigative team, focusing on police, prosecutors and public officials. Previously, as a member of the Globe’s Spotlight Team, he was a 2018 Pulitzer Prize finalist for a series examining race in Boston and shared in an AIPS Sport Media award for the investigative podcast “Gladiator: Aaron Hernandez and Football Inc.” He also was part of the staff that won a 2014 Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the Boston Marathon bombing. Earlier in his career, he served as City Hall bureau chief after launching the Globe’s online news desk in 2006. His other honors include a 2020 Online Journalism explanatory reporting award for the Spotlight Team’s “Seeing Red” series about traffic problems in Boston; a National Headliner team award and a National Association of Black Journalists award for the 2013 series “68 Blocks: Life, Death, Hope”; and a 2003 Rookie of the Year award from the New England Press Association. Prior to joining the Globe, Ryan worked for The Associated Press, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, The Day of New London, Conn., and the Highbridge Horizon in the Bronx.
@GlobeAndrewRyan

Elias Schisgall is associate managing editor at The Harvard Crimson, where he oversees and edits a team of more than 80 reporters producing daily coverage of Harvard and Cambridge news. He previously served as the Crimson’s Newsletters editor and as a senior beat reporter covering Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences and city government and local politics in Cambridge. At Harvard, he is studying social studies. A native of Brooklyn, New York, Elias is passionate about local politics, political philosophy and journalism. You can often find him playing guitar or piano, cooking or going on bike rides.
@eschisgall

Charles Sennott is the founder and editor-in-chief of The GroundTruth Project, a nonprofit news organization which serves as the home of Report for America and Report for the World. He is an award-winning correspondent, best-selling author and editor with 40 years of experience in international, national and local journalism. A leading social entrepreneur in new media, Sennott in 2009 became the co-founder of GlobalPost, an acclaimed international news website. He then went on to launch GroundTruth and served as its CEO and editor-in-chief from 2012 to 2022. In 2017, GroundTruth launched its local reporting initiative, Report for America, and in 2021 launched an international, sister program, Report for the World. Sennott, who worked with slain journalist Jim Foley at GlobalPost, will receive the The James W. Foley Legacy Foundation’s World Press Freedom Award on May 1, 2024.
@CMSennott

Joshua L. Steiner is a partner at SSW, a private investment firm, and member of the board at Bloomberg, L.P., where he was previously Head of Industry Verticals. Prior to joining Bloomberg, Steiner co-founded and was co-president of Quadrangle Group, LLC, a private equity and asset management firm. Before co-founding Quadrangle, he was a managing director at Lazard Frères & Co. LLC. From 1993 to 1995 he served as chief of staff for the U.S. Department of the Treasury.

Jaemark Tordecilla spent the last nine years as the head of digital media at GMA News in the Philippines, where he oversaw all online publishing and audience development activities and founded the network’s Digital Video Lab. Under his leadership, GMA News Online was recognized by the Reuters Institute Digital News Report as the top online source of news in the Philippines. It also has been honored for its longform features, journalism innovation, audience engagement, and digital documentary storytelling by the World Association of News Publishers, the Society of Publishers in Asia and the New York Festivals, among other organizations. In 2021, Tordecilla won a TOYM Award, one of the Philippines’ top honors for young civic leaders, for his work in digital journalism. He began his journalism career at the hilippine Center for Investigative Journalism where he was part of the team that won Agence France-Presse’s Kate Webb Prize for coverage of the 2009 Maguindanao Massacre in which dozens of journalists were murdered. He also helped train journalists from Myanmar living in exile in Thailand.
@jaemark

Johanna Wild is a German open-source researcher at the investigative nonprofit Bellingcat in Amsterdam, where she is part of the overall strategy team. She founded the organization’s investigative tech team, which conducts data-driven investigations and develops tools for online researchers, often in collaboration with technical volunteers. In 2022, the group created a research dashboard to investigate online ideologies across Europe and Wild has used the tool to research the QAnon movement in Germany. Previously, she founded a startup that developed a social listening tool for newsrooms and provided online verification workshops for journalists. She also worked as a media advisor at the Civil Peace Service program of the German development agency GIZ, helping journalists in Rwanda, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo produce radio broadcasts for the Voice of America (VOA) and set up their own nonprofit organization. She additionally supported local journalists from Yemen with conflict reporting.
@JohannaWild