Ariel Zirulnick is the director of news experimentation at LAist. She leads a team that combines product methodologies, audience and community engagement, and editorial expertise to drive editorial innovation. On the side, she teaches at CUNY’s Entrepreneurial Journalism Creators Program and the News Product Alliance’s News Product Management Certification Program. She’s also a sustainability analyst, coach and board member for LION Publishers.  In addition, she consults, teaches, and conducts workshops on audience research, product development, membership, audience participation, community engagement, and designing venture support for media sustainability programs. Zirulnick co-founded Perspectives, an ongoing effort to introduce journalists to new approaches to addressing systemic issues in the industry. She also served as News Fund Director at the Membership Puzzle Project, a public research project that catalyzed and explored membership models in news from May 2017 to August 2021. Before joining the Membership Puzzle Project, she was the director of The New Tropic, a local media startup in Miami. Previously, she was a foreign correspondent in Nairobi and the Middle East editor at the Christian Science Monitor.

Ashley Alvarado is vice president of community engagement and strategic initiatives at Southern California Public Radio (LAist). She is on the board of the Online News Association, the advisory committee of Gather, the national advisory board of Poynter, and a Table Stakes and Digital Transformation Program coach. In 2019, SCPR won the inaugural Gather Award for engaged journalism portfolio at the Online Journalism Awards. SCPR won the award again in 2020 and 2022.

Emma Carrasco is the senior vice president of corporate affairs for the NBCUniversal News Group, which is comprised of NBC News, MSNBC and CNBC. Prior to joining the NBCUniversal News Group in 2020, Carrasco was senior vice president and global engagement officer for the National Geographic Society. Under her leadership, the National Geographic Explorers Festival was expanded and internationalized, convening changemakers in Washington, D.C., London, Mexico City and Hong Kong. She previously served as chief marketing officer and senior vice president of audience development for NPR. Over the years, Carrasco has also contributed her skills to República/Havas, Nortel Networks, McDonald’s, Univision and Fleishman-Hillard.  The recipient of numerous recognitions over the years, Carrasco was recently named to the Most Powerful Latinas list by the Association of Latino Professional Professionals for America and was named a 2023 Rising Star by Latino Leaders magazine.

Felicitas is a Product manager and leader navigating the intersection of journalism, tech, and media business models. She is currently the Executive Director of the News Product Alliance, a community of support and practice for news product professionals and product thinkers working together toward a more sustainable and ethical future for the news industry. She was featured as “One to Watch” in the News Industry by Amy Webb’s Future Today Institute annual Tech Trends Report for her leadership. In her previous role as the Innovation Director at SembraMedia, she worked with news organizations across Latin America, Spain, and the United States to promote innovation and led product design and systems development for the organization.

Matthew Caruana Galizia is the director of the Daphne Caruana Galizia Foundation. He worked at the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), developing the technology that enabled major investigations such as ‘Panama Papers’ and ‘Paradise Papers’. In 2018, Matthew left ICIJ to continue working on the case around the killing of his mother, Daphne Caruana Galizia, who was assassinated in 2017 following her investigations into corruption in Malta. Since then, Matthew Caruana Galizia and his family have worked tirelessly to tackle impunity and to unveil the truth about Daphne’s death. 

Nuria Net is a journalist and Founder of Shake It Easy Media, a content studio that champions Latinx voices and experiences through nonfiction storytelling. Some of her recent productions include “La Semanal Live”, a weekly talk show on Twitch featuring the latest Latin music news, releases and artist interviews and the award-winning documentary series Punk In Translation, about the pivotal role of latin musicians in punk music history, which was the first Audible show produced and released in Spanish and in English simultaneously. A digital entrepreneur and Latin music expert, Nuria co-founded the pioneering Latinx media company Remezcla.com in New York City in 2006 and served as its Editor-in-Chief. She is also a founding digital editor at Fusion (TV and digital network), where she was in charge of innovative storytelling and launched the brand’s Snapchat channel. Nuria spent over five years at Univision’s digital news operation in Miami. At Univision, she oversaw a team that created original content focused on Latin music for a young bilingual audience, and she created and launched the U-LAB Music brand. She also revamped music news coverage on Univision’s Uforia digital properties. A graduate of Columbia Journalism School, Nuria has worked at MTV, Latina magazine and The New York Times and has written for Rolling Stone, Billboard, EW, Mass Appeal, and The NY Daily News. Nuria was named a “Wonder Woman of Latin Music” by the Latin Alternative Music Conference 2022, has been part of Billboard’s 30 under 30 Top Executives in Media and was also included in LinkedIn’s first-ever ‘Next Wave’ – a list of 150 professionals, 35 and under, who are transforming key industries – in the media category. She was also chosen out of 500 applicants as part of the inaugural class of the Digital Women Leadership Academy organized by Poynter and the Online News Association.

Selymar Colón is an award-winning journalist currently as Executive Director of Digital at GFR Media in San Juan, Puerto Rico. In 2022, Colón joined the Center for Media Integrity for the Americas as a member of the Board of Advisors. Colón spent the 2019-2020 academic year as a fellow at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard where she took courses on leadership with a focus on diverse and inclusive teams and culture, successful business strategies and innovation. Before her fellowship, she served as editor-in-chief of digital news at Univision, where she built a team of multimedia journalists and drove the network’s digital integration. She rose up the ranks as producer for Univision’s Sunday public affairs show, Al Punto, hosted by Jorge Ramos, renowned journalist and co-anchor of Univision’s award-winning evening news program “Noticiero Univision.” A digital pioneer, she championed the use of social media in the newsroom early on among producers and journalists, which then led her to be promoted to a newly-created position of director of digital integration. In this role she was charged with creating a team of multimedia producers to produce digital only videos liaising with the digital and broadcast newsroom. Colón’s efforts contributed to Univision News winning awards including: Edward R. Murrow for Excellence in Video and Innovation; News and Documentary Emmys for Outstanding Feature in Spanish; The Gabo Prize for Image; The World Press Photo Online Video of the Year; The King of Spain International Journalism Award for Niños de la Frontera” (Children of the Border), its online in-depth coverage of the Humanitarian Crisis that played out at the U.S.-Mexican border. She was also part of the team that won the King of Spain award and the Latin Social TV award for the TV news special “El Gran Encuentro” (Meet the Candidates). Named a 40 under 40 : Latinos in American Politics by the Huffington Post, Colón holds an M.S.  in Investigative Journalism from Florida International University and a B.A. in Communications and Business from Lynn University.

Yvette is a senior reporter at the Center for Public Integrity covering inequality in economic and social well-being. Most recently she worked as an environmental justice reporter for Grist & HuffPost, and as an investigative reporter for ThinkProgress in Washington D.C. She reports at the intersection of justice and equity, examining the impact of systemic disparities, such as environmental pollution and contamination, on marginalized communities throughout the country. She has reported extensively on the pervasiveness of toxic lead contamination across the country, including an investigation on the legacy of industrial lead pollution in urban residential neighborhoods as a 2019 McGraw Center for Business Journalism fellow, and a five-part investigative series where she showed through soil testing how lead exposure is still harming children in complex ways. In 2022, she was selected as a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center practitioner to create a journalist’s guide for reporting on soil lead contamination. She currently serves as president for the National Association of Hispanic Journalists; and for two decades served as a board member of CCNMA: Latino Journalists of California, the oldest regional organization of journalists of color in the country.

Charo Henríquez is a journalist, working at the intersection of journalism and technology, to help create better editorial operations and a more inclusive culture in newsrooms. She has focused most of her career on leading innovation in news organizations. Currently, Charo is part of the leadership team of the Culture and Careers department and leads the Newsroom Development and Support and Newsroom Research teams at The New York Times. She is also the Vice President of Online News Association’s Executive Board of Directors and a member of the Advisory Council Board to the Spanish-language Journalism Program at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York. In 2021 she completed a fellowship at Columbia University’s Sulzberger Executive Leadership Program. Charo has been faculty for ONA Women’s Leadership Accelerator and Poynter Institute’s Leadership Academy for Women in Digital Media. 

Gina Chua is Executive Editor at Semafor, a new global news startup. Prior to joining Semafor, she was Executive Editor at Reuters, where she oversaw newsroom operations, logistics, budgets, safety and security, and worked with technology teams to develop newsroom tools, among other responsibilities. Gina was also the editor-in-chief of the South China Morning Post and The Asian Wall Street Journal in Hong Kong; a deputy managing editor at The Wall Street Journal in New York; a foreign correspondent in Singapore, Manila and Hanoi; and a television and radio journalist in Singapore. A native of Singapore, she graduated with a bachelor’s in mathematics from the University of Chicago and a master’s in journalism from Columbia University. Gina transitioned in late 2020, making her one of the most senior transgender journalists in the industry.

Maria Elena Salinas is award-winning journalist and author is one of the most recognizable and respected journalists in the country. Her career spans four decades, including serving as co-anchor of Univision’s evening news for more than 30 years and co-hosting news magazine Aquí y Ahora. Her work has earned the top awards presented in broadcasting, among them multiple Emmys, including a Lifetime Achievement Emmy, a Peabody, 3 Gracie Awards, the Edward R. Murrow Award, and the Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Television Political Journalism. And has been inducted into the Hall of Fame of Broadcasting and Cable, the National Association of Broadcasters and the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, as well as receiving honorary doctorates from American University and California State University Fullerton. Salinas joined ABC News as a contributor and consultant to the Race and Culture Unit. She has reported stories for the award-winning news program Nightline and election coverage focusing on the Latino vote among other shows and platforms and was part of the Uvalde365 team that covered the school shooting’s aftermath for one year. In the past, Salinas served as a contributor for CBS News. She also hosted and co-executive produced  “The Real Story with Maria Elena Salinas,” a true crime series for Investigation Discovery, that can be seen on the Discovery+ streaming service. Salinas is a founding member of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists and for over two decades has provided dozens of students with a scholarship under her name. She also serves on the board of the Hispanic Scholarship Fund.

Natasha S. Alford is an award-winning journalist, host and millennial media executive driven by the power of storytelling to inspire and change people’s lives. Natasha was named “Emerging Journalist of the Year” by the National Association of Black Journalists in 2018. She then went on to be selected as a 2019 Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting grantee. This grant afforded her the opportunity to travel to Loíza, Puerto Rico, and create an original Amazon Prime Video documentary on race, policing, and the complexities of Afro-Latin identity titled: ‘Afro-Latinx Revolution: Puerto Rico’ (2020). In 2020, Natasha was awarded a Black Voices for Black Justice grant for her work and announced the formation of a new scholarship to support aspiring journalists of color.

As the Vice President of Digital Content and Sr. Correspondent for theGrio digital network, Natasha leads strategic creative vision and production for all original content on theGrio.

Natasha is also a CNN Political Analyst, where she offers commentary on the news, politics, and movements of the moment.

Lori Montenegro worked as a national correspondent in Washington DC for 22 years, covering national and international stories. While covering the White House and Capitol Hill, Lori covered a range of issues from politics, elections, immigration, health care, and the economy, and in between all that did many other stories highlighting the many accomplishments of Latinos in DC and across the nation. While serving as Telemundo’s correspondent in the nation’s capital, she also worked with NBC News and MSNBC.

She has been honored with numerous awards, including the 2020 First Amendment Clarity Award from the Radio Television Digital News Foundation. In 2019, she took on a new role – she was named bureau chief for Telemundo’s Washington DC bureau. In 2023, the National Museum of American History will present ¡De última hora! Latinas Report Breaking News, an approximately 1,000-square-foot, bilingual exhibition showcasing the work of seven Latinas in Spanish-language television, including Lori Montenegro.

Prior to joining Telemundo, Montenegro spent three years as a D.C. correspondent for Univision affiliates. Lori began her career, first in radio and then at Channel 51, Telemundo’s local affiliate in Miami.

Aimee Rinehart is the Senior Product Manager AI Strategy for The Associated Press. Before joining AP, she was the Deputy Director of First Draft’s New York bureau helping journalists and newsrooms to identify, verify and report on mis- and disinformation through the 2018 and 2020 U.S. election cycles. Aimee is in the 2024 cohort of the Executive Program in News Innovation and Leadership at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism CUNY as the Tow-Knight Fellow in AI Studies. She co-led the Knight Center for the Americas massive open online course on how newsrooms can use AI. She served on the steering committee for Partnership on AI’s AI Procurement and Use Guidebook for Newsrooms, and was a council member advising the direction of the Consortium on Trust in Media and Technology at the University of Florida. Aimee started working online in 1996 and was a digital originator at The New York Times and returned to print briefly as an editor at the Wall Street Journal Europe in Brussels.

As Head of PBS Digital Studios, Maribel Lopez serves as the executive producer of PBS’s original digital programming, oversees publishing operations and manages relationships with PBS member stations on behalf of PBS Digital Studios. PBS Digital Studios is a leader in online content creation and averages over 27 million users and 50 million views on YouTube.  

Prior to joining PBS in 2021, Maribel held several creative and leadership roles at member station Twin Cities PBS (TPT), located in St. Paul, Minnesota. She was the executive producer of Sound Field, an award-winning music education YouTube series produced for PBS Digital Studios and the managing director of Racism Unveiled, TPT’s pilot multiplatform storytelling initiative about racism in Minnesota. She was also managing director of Rewire.org, a national, nonprofit magazine for young adults produced by TPT. In these roles, she led the editorial vision, developed and implemented audience-centered digital content strategies that were mission-driven and data-informed, resulting in exponential growth across digital platforms. 

Beginning as a production intern at Iowa PBS, Maribel has spent her entire professional career in public broadcasting. A frequent public media conference presenter and panelist, Maribel is most passionate about engaging newer, younger audiences to public media through digital journalism and storytelling and is interested in developing and retaining public media’s future leaders. Maribel regularly serves as a mentor for PBS Digital Immersion, Public Media Women in Leadership and is a past member of the PBS Digital Media Advisory Council (DMAC). 

Maribel is a member of Poynter’s Leadership Academy for Women in Media (2021) and she has served as a panel reviewer for the National Endowment for the Humanities and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.  

Maribel holds a bachelor’s degree in mass communications and Spanish from Wartburg College in Waverly, Iowa.

Jelani Cobb, Dean, Graduate School of Journalism and Henry R. Luce Professor of Journalism

Kate Kennedy, Director of Professional Programs

Daniel Alarcón, Associate Professor of Journalism, Columbia Journalism School and Co-founder and  Host, Radio Ambulante

Carolina Guerrero, CEO and Co-Founder, Radio Ambulante

Umbreen Bhatti, Constance Hess ’66 Director, Athena Center for Leadership, Barnard College

Robert Bontempo, Academic Director in Executive Education, Adjunct Professor of Business, Columbia  Business School

Ashli Carter, Lecturer, Management Division, Columbia Business School

Karen Baum Gordon, Principal, Strategic Horizons

Charo Henríquez, Head of Newsroom Development and Support, The New York Times

LaToya Jordan, Founder and Principal, Lead By Design Lab

Mazin Sidahmed, Co-founder, Documented

Max Siegelbaum, Co-founder, Documented