The Future of Media Technology Conference

Meera is the Content Development Exec at Auddy and a BPA award-winning freelance producer who has produced stories for the BBC, Somethin' Else, Vespucci, UK Parliament, Waitrose, and other well-known brands. Meera is Ambie and APA nominated, and has had her work featured in The Guardian and The Times and selected as one of Spotify's Best Episodes Of 2021.

With a background in Business Management and Industrial Systems, Markus has been involved in the business of the Internet since his very first ISP business, one of the earliest registered UK Internet businesses, founded back in 1995. As the CEO and founder of Affino he remains one of the world's leading consultants and practitioners in digital transformation and digital business development.

Over the years Markus has been a board member and executive team advisor for numerous companies; an international government advisor to SME digital businesses; and has been involved in the development and transformation of hundreds of businesses, both large and small.

Markus has worked with leading brands and organisations - including Audi, BBC, Casio, Diesel, EMI, MasterCard, Royal Opera House, Rovio, TTG Media, The Stage, UBM, UMG, Gill, Procurement Leaders, Briefing Media, Ocean Media Group, and IDG. He also works alongside the key Publishing associations - the PPA, and the Association of Online Publishers.

David Dinsmore became Chief Operating Officer in September 2015.

He has a long history with News UK starting as a reporter at the age of 22 on The Scottish Sun in 1990, before rising through the ranks to become Editor of The Sun in June 2013. David has held a number of senior roles at Britain’s best-selling paper including Managing Editor where he helped to oversee the launch of the Sunday edition.

Born and raised in Scotland, David began his national newspaper career on The Scottish Sun where he became Editor in 2006, taking circulation to a market-leading 400,000-plus. In 2010, David was made General Manager of News UK in Scotland and subsequently became Director of Operations for News UK.

David is married with two children

Piers North has over 20 years’ experience working across online advertising and digital media.As Reach plc’s Chief Revenue Officer, he is responsible for driving growth of the UK's largest news publisher’s commercial business. Prior to this he was responsible for the group’s online and mobile portfolio as Group Digital Commercial Director. During his time, Reach became the first UK news group to reach over 40 million online users: a feat repeated in consecutive months. Piers originally trained as a journalist before moving into the commercial side of the industry. He then worked in various digital strategy roles, including a ten-year stint at Yahoo, before joining Reach. A regular speaker, panellist and awards judge, Piers has featured on Radio 4, at AdWeek Europe, Media360, INMA Global Summit & IAB Engage, and as a Mediaweek awards judge.

Jo was appointed Chief Data Officer in November 2016 after 3 years as Director of Strategic and
Commercial Data, and having spent the previous 7 years as Digital Commercial Director for ESI
Media. She acquired additional responsibility for reader revenues and subscriptions in June 2020.
Throughout her career, she has been fortunate enough to be at the very forefront of data and digital
disruption in the publishing industry. From driving change through the introduction of e-commerce,
video and programmatic advertising (before it was mainstream!) to pioneering a company-wide data
strategy for a multichannel media business with a digital monthly audience of 100 million.
Working across The Independent and London Evening Standard as Chief Data & Marketing Officer, Jo
is tasked with driving the Data, Identity Management and Consumer Subscriptions Strategy across
the business. She also oversees GDPR compliance.
In October 2016 Jo was appointed Chairman of the Association of Online Publishers (AOP), a position
she still holds.
Jo is a regular speaker and panellist at conferences including INMA, Digiday, ATS, Digital Media
Strategies, AOP, Guardian Changing Media Summit and at tech vendor, partner and agency events.
She contributes thought-leadership pieces to many digital publications including New Digital Age,
Campaign, Exchange Wire, Media Voices and Press Gazette.
Jo graduated from Bristol University with an honours degree in biology, and worked at IPC Media for
five years in sales for New Scientist, before moving to JC Decaux and The Independent. Jo’s career
has been interspersed with travelling, completing an MBA at Ashridge Business School, and having
two children.

Danni Haughan is Head of Development at Small Wardour, a newly formed company specialising in children’s audio. The company was founded by Carla Herbertson of Small Audio and David Smith of Wardour Studios and together with Danni the team create thoughtful audio content that both children and their parents can enjoy. She also works with creators, platforms and brands to identify opportunities for kids’ podcasts and advises their clients on their podcast strategy. Danni is also a Podcast Strategy Consultant for her own venture Crafted Sounds.

Danni has worked in podcasts and audio for her whole career. As the Audiobooks Editor and Podcast Producer at Penguin Random House she produced the Webby Award nominated Penguin Podcast and worked on the Roald Dahl audiobooks relaunch, as well as the highly successful Peppa Pig audiobook collections.

At Apple she was the Apple Podcasts Lead for Europe, where she managed the business, built strong relationships with a variety creators from global media companies to independent podcasters and curated the Apple podcast store for multiple European markets. She also launched Apple Podcasts Subscriptions in the UK and Northern Europe.

Danni is a long-time podcast listener and loves to think creatively about all the wonderful possibilities of audio. She is passionate about getting children listening and the benefits it can bring to them and their families. She loves to empower creators to achieve the best for their shows and help listeners discover the stories that are just right for them.

Charlotte Tobitt joined Press Gazette in February 2018 and rose through the ranks from chief reporter to UK editor to lead the site's news coverage. Previously she spent four years at the Surrey Advertiser and won awards including the Trainee Journalist of the Year Award at the NCTJ Awards of Excellence.

Chris Burns is the Head of Audio and Digital for BBC England. She is in charge of the 39 Local Radio stations in England.
Prior to joining BBC England, Chris was Chief Operating Officer within the BBC’s Deputy Director General’s Group. Chris started her career in radio and has worked in local radio for both the BBC and the commercial sector. She also has extensive experience in network radio and was the editor of daytime programmes on BBC Radio 4 including You & Yours, Woman’s Hour, Any Questions and Start the Week. She launched Saturday Live and was responsible for bringing new voices to Radio 4 including Jane Garvey and Kirsty Young. She chaired the Radio Academy for three years.

Chris has worked as a presenter, producer, editor, department head and spent four years as Head of Group Operations for BBC Network Radio.

Claudia is the global head of the Bloomberg's News Innovation Lab which includes news automation. Using technology to explore the frontiers of data-rich content creation, the News Lab seeks to support innovative ways to create stories. Claudia joined Bloomberg over two decades ago in the Sao Paulo newsroom in Brazil and moved to London eleven years ago to take on the news market specialist team, which she developed into a global operation. As head of the news market specialists, Claudia acquired a first-hand unique perspective on the many information needs that global financial markets audiences have. Recent academic endeavors include an executive master in Strategies and Innovation from Said Business School, Oxford and, an academic master in Philosophy and Artificial Intelligence at NCH/Northeastern University where she is currently exploring ethical grounds in AI development.

Cecilia Campbell is a Swedish media journalist with over 20 years experience reporting on the news publishing industry internationally. She is the CMO of Swedish tech company United Robots, based in Malmö. The United Robots team is effectively driving the news publishing industry's adoption of content automation. The company is unique in the market in that they provide ready-to-publish robot written editorial content specifically for news media. Since Campbell started at the company in 2019, United Robots have established themselves as the main provider of automated content for newsrooms globally, and the go-to experts on content automation in news industry publications / events.
Previously, Campbell worked for WAN-IFRA World Association of News Publishers, co-leading its reader revenue executive programme as well as running international study tours and workshops. In 2018 she authored the report Engaged Readers Don’t Churn – Retention Lessons for Digital Subscriptions.

Denis is the CEO at Glide Publishing Platform. An experienced CEO and CTO with more than two decades of experience in UK print and digital publishing, including leading technology at News UK, Northern & Shell, and Which?. He has led multiple digital transformations at major publishers, and now leads Glide, a SaaS content management platform aimed at publishers.

The Spectator is a weekly British magazine that covers politics, culture, and geopolitical affairs, who began publishing in 1828, and is now considered the world’s longest-standing weekly magazine. Peter came to The Spectator via BMJ, Avaunt, Microsoft, and Creative Commons and is well known for his down-to-earth approach to the realities of technology provision within digital and print publishing.

Sanjay is a seasoned technology leader with more than 25 years of experience implementing innovative and practical solutions to complex problems across multiple industries including media and financial services. Currently CIO of the New Statesman Media Group he recently oversaw the launch of a new purpose-built central publishing platform for the group which powered the replatform of the redesigned New Statesman website. Sanjay has also overseen technical delivery at Beano Studios and Freesat as well as working in various senior delivery roles at Channel 4, ITV, Sky and Virgin Money.

Rachel Corp is the incoming Chief Executive Officer of ITN, overseeing one of the largest television production companies in the UK and the producer of live network news programming for ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5. As well as its broadcast news division, ITN is also a market leader in factual programme-making, sports production, advertising production and business-to-business content. She takes up the post on 1st September 2022.

Before becoming ITN’s CEO, Rachel was Editor of ITV News, produced by ITN, where she had overall responsibility for the vision, strategy and direction for all of ITV’s award-winning national news programmes and digital output, as well as overseeing ITV News London, ITV News-produced Tonight programme episodes, current affairs series On Assignment, and special live programmes such as General Elections and Royal events - leading a team of over 300 people in the UK and abroad while overseeing a multi-million-pound budget. Under her Editorship ITV News broke a string of major stories in recent years, including the Westminster ‘Partygate’ scandal, the series of reports into substandard conditions in council housing, the undercover investigation into Amazon’s disposal of unsold products and the global exclusive eyewitness report from inside the storming of the US Capitol. ITV News has been recognised with numerous major awards over the last year, including the prestigious Royal Television Society award for Best Daily News Programme for the second year in a row and most recently a BAFTA for best news coverage.

Previously Rachel was Editor of 5 News, steering the team through a busy news period, including the 2017 terror attacks, snap election, Grenfell and leading the way on the issue of sexual harassment. As Editor of ITV News London, Rachel’s tenure saw her oversee the London Mayoral Election live debates, coverage of the EU Referendum and agenda-setting investigations. Rachel joined ITN as a trainee and her early career included the roles of North of England and Senior Field Producer, covering major stories in the UK and abroad, from Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq, to the Hutton Inquiry and the Soham murders. Following a spell as the BBC’s Senior Moscow Producer, she returned to ITV News as a News Editor, rising to Deputy Head of Home News and Head of Home News, during which time her reporting team twice won the coveted Royal Television Society Journalism Award for coverage of the rise of jihadi terror and an exclusive investigation into Thomas Cook.

Karen is Managing Director of Digital, Partnerships and Innovation at Telegraph Media Group, leading its initiatives to drive the company’s subscriber strategy and commercial revenue growth. Karen has a long history in media and ad tech, working at businesses including Classic FM, dmg media, Stylist Group and Innovid. Karen is also a trustee board director of UK children's cancer charity Young Lives vs Cancer, and a board member of the AOP.

With over 20 years’ experience in news publishing, Neil was previously Director of Engineering at Reach plc before joining Endava in 2018 as a Delivery Partner. Neil leads the engagement with Endava’s largest customers in the advertising industry, delivering modern architected solutions as well as support and consultancy services for those customers.

Gabe is a VP at Sophi.io. In his role, Gabe assists the business by opening new markets and helping to foster partnership opportunities that benefit all participants. For the last four years as a member of the Globe’s executive leadership team, Gabe has developed opportunities and driven results for multiple lines of business and assisted in shaping corporate strategy. Prior to this, Gabe spent eight years in senior leadership positions in The Globe and Mail newsroom, where he oversaw teams ranging from Opinion, to Arts, to Features and led numerous award-winning journalists. Gabe spent the first decade of his career in a variety of positions at the Toronto Star, include Insight editor, city hall reporter and assignment editor. Gabe is a member of the board of the Bentway Conservancy and a past co-chair of the Canadian Art Foundation.

Bala Sundaramoorthy is a veteran strategy, technology and operations executive with over 25 years of industry experience in financial services, media and insurance industries. In his current role as the VP and General Manager for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, he is responsible for strategy, product & technology, print and digital operations/production as well as customer service. Since joining Cox in 2014 he has held several leadership positions and has been instrumental in transforming the digital landscape of all consumer facing products and technology across Newspapers, TV and Radio for Cox Media Group. Starting in 2015, he led innovation by organizing hackathon events across CMG & all Cox divisions; developing ground breaking solutions in the OTT and mobile space and optimizing technology operations. He has a Master’s degree in Business Administration from Goizueta Business School, Emory University.

William recently joined the London office of Press Gazette and the New Statesman. He was previously North America Editor of Press Gazette, based in Vancouver, Canada. Prior to joining Press Gazette, William was a business correspondent for the Mail on Sunday and chief reporter for City A.M.

Nigel Clarke is a TV presenter well known for hosting ‘The Baby Club’ and ‘The Toddler Club’ on CBeebies. Nigel also founded Dadvengers an amazing parenting network on a mission to support fatherhood with resources, information, and a podcast.
Launched in 2020 the podcast invites celebrity guests to share their own intimate parenting experiences; the highs, the lows, their triumphs, and their failures. It has recently been nominated for Best Family Podcast in the British Podcast Awards and Nigel encourages all parents (not just dads) to give it a listen. In parenting, a dad’s point of view is not often talked about or focused on, which is why the conversations in the podcast are so important when trying to bring about change.

Gian Camillo Vezzoli has been working for the media industry since 1996. A software engineer at heart, he has enjoyed different roles in the software development business, ranging from Engineering Management to Operations, Product Management and Marketing. He is now managing the Content Business Unit at Atex, where he is responsible for development, sales and delivery of the content management portfolio, that ranges from advanced cloud experience management frontends to state of the art digital and print workflows

Nic Newman is a Senior Research Associate at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford University where he is lead author of the annual Digital News Report, the world’s largest on-going study of consumer behaviour around news. Nic also authors an influential annual report on media and technology trends. He is also a digital media consultant and previously was a senior editor at the BBC and a founding member of the BBC News Website.

JT Batson called upon a wealth of entrepreneurial experience when creating Hudson MX. A graduate of Stanford University, JT began his career as an early employee of Mozilla, where he focused on international growth of the then-nascent Firefox browser. Following Mozilla, JT joined
the Rubicon Project pre-revenue where he helped scale the company to six countries as Executive Vice-President, Revenue and Global Development.
This experience, as one of the pioneers of the programmatic advertising era, led to Donovan Data Systems to appoint JT as President of DDS Digital – where he spearheaded the deal with Mediabank to create Mediaocean, a powerhouse player in ad tech serving the largest advertising holding
companies. Building on his success leveraging technology to make the buying and selling of advertising more efficient, JT joined Cumulus Media as their Chief Revenue Officer. An active investor, JT was a founding Partner of LUMA Capital Partners and served as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at both Greylock Partners and Accel Partners.

Deepna Devkar is Vice President of Data Science & Engineering and heads up the Data Intelligence team. She works to understand the CNN audience across devices and build recommendation systems that increase user engagement across all CNN brands.

During her career in data science, she has primarily worked in the media industry, both as a hands-on IC (individual contributor) and as a manager responsible for building and leading cross-functional teams.

Larry Chevres is Vice President of Software Engineering for CNN Digital. He is responsible for the core content platforms that are used to create, curate and control the publishing and distribution of CNN's Digital content across all channels. His focus is on building a new content platform that empowers not just editorial, but product management, audience development, sales, ad operations and all the other business units that rely on an efficient, fast, intelligent, informative, friendly and flexible content platform.

Chris Stone is a digital publishing specialist who has spent the last decade building audiences for some of the UK’s leading news brands. He is an expert in using video and audio to reach new users, drive subscriptions and create revenue. He currently leads audio and video for the New Statesman, a leading political and cultural publication based in the UK.

In previous roles Chris led the video and audio teams for London’s Evening Standard newspaper, where he grew an international audience of millions for their audio content from a standing start, increased video views 50x in the space of two years, and developed million-pound revenue streams. Prior to this he produced video and audio content for The Telegraph, launching successful podcasts including Bryony Gordon’s Mad World (which opened with an exclusive interview with Prince Harry), and Chopper’s Brexit Podcast (now Chopper’s Politics).

David Marsland is the Head of Audio at the Evening Standard and presenter of the How to be a CEO podcast. A double-Webby nominated producer, he co-created ES Audio in 2019 taking it to global success with hit shows such as Tech & Science Daily and innovative partnerships with Google, who he worked with on voice AI news. Previously he has worked as a journalist, broadcaster and producer for some of the UK’s biggest newsrooms including the BBC, ITN, Sky News and Scottish Television.

John leads the BBC’s Data Journalism Team, which expanded over the past year, and is now based across two sites, in London and in Birmingham.

The team was first set up in 2017 and comprises data journalists, data scientists, designers, statisticians and open source analysts. Data projects produced this year have covered Covid, the War in Ukraine, the Uber Files and the cost of living.

Matt is responsible for podcast awards operations in Britain, Australia and Ireland as part of Haymarket Media. He is also the CEO of Rethink Audio, the podcast production company behind long-running hits including Happy Place, The Week Unwrapped and Page 94: The Private Eye Podcast.

Juan is the CEO of Footballco, the world’s largest football content and media business, backed by US private equity giant, TPG. He oversees every aspect of the company, driving its global growth ambitions. Prior to Footballco, Juan was Chief Ventures Officer of DAZN Group, a minority shareholder of Footballco. His career in sports media started at PERFORM, where he joined in 2007 as Managing Director, Americas, leading the company's early expansion into the U.S. and Latin America, before transitioning to CEO of DAZN Media in 2015.

Cheryl Brumley is the Global Head of Audio at the Financial Times where she leads on podcast strategy Previously, she was the founding executive producer of The Intelligence, The Economist’s flagship daily podcast. Brumley was also a freelance reporter and producer for leading podcast and radio outlets including Public Radio International and the BBC World Service. She developed podcast features for the London School of Economics and is the co-author of a book on research communication.

You can follow her at @cherylbrumley.

Ellis Watson has led diverse, high-growth companies in both the PLC and public arenas.  From News Corporation where he saw their transition from Old Media to New, to being global CEO of to Simon Cowell’s Syco Corporation, he has a fascinating insight in the impact of the digital revolution on media. He’s one of just a handful of speakers to have ever been asked to do two TED talks, and is as candid as he is entertaining in his insight.

Caroline has worked in media for the last 18 years. She started at the Telegraph where she progressed through Classified before moving to Titan Outdoor. In 2008 Caroline moved to the Evening Standard where they launched London Lite, moved the Standard to a profitable free newspaper and bought the Independent. In 2012 Caroline moved to Dennis Publishing to work on The Week. For 10 successful years, Caroline worked on and ran the commercial team across The Week, MoneyWeek and The Week Junior. In May 2022 she joined BuzzFeed as Commercial Director for EMEA managing sales and account management for BuzzFeed's portfolio of brands including BuzzFeed, BuzzFeed News, HuffPost, Tasty and Seasoned.

Kate is the Commercial Partnerships Director - EMEA & APAC, based in London working with premium publishers including the Guardian, The Economist, the BBC, The Times, NYT and the Financial Times. Kate’s focus is on ensuring maximum revenue potential across Acast’s publisher podcast portfolio, helping premium publishers navigate the unique nuances of the podcasting landscape.
During Kate’s time at Acast she has helped publishers grow revenue exponentially by offering brands innovative, market-leading podcast solutions, and is the driving force for harmonious co-selling relationships.

Andy is one of the most experienced technology leaders in publishing today, with unrivalled experience in acquiring and creating systems to grow publishing businesses.
Andy is leading Hello! and Hola! through an ambitious product portfolio overhaul, building on experience in technology leadership working with brands including The Week, FourFourTwo, What HiFi?, Stuff, Volkswagen Group, the Army, and the IAAF.

With more than 15 years experience in senior Technology roles, including steering UK media firm Dennis Publishing to a successful sale to Future PLC, Andrew has a unique insight into building, rebuilding and running media businesses, and building high performing teams and technology.