Arzu Geybulla, Azerbaijani columnist and writer, with a special focus in digital authoritarianism and its implications on human rights and press freedom in Azerbaijan. In the past, Arzu has written for Al Jazeera, Eurasianet, Foreign Policy Democracy Lab, CODA, and Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty. She is a regular contributor at Open Democracy, IWPR, and Osservatorio Balcani e Caucaso. She is the recipient of several fellowships and was featured on BBC 100 Women Changemakers in 2014. Currently, she is based in Istanbul where she continues her journalism work and working on her book about the story of Azerbaijani political dissidents.

Catherine Gicheru is an International Center for Journalists (ICFJ) Knight Fellow currently spearheading a project that drives coverage of underreported gender, health and development issues affecting marginalized groups. That initiative, the Africa Women Journalism Project (AWJP), also works to strengthening the voices of women journalists by helping them to become innovators in their newsrooms.As the driving force behind the AWJP, Gicheru leads a team of journalists, mentors and data analysts in five African countries (Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania and Uganda) who are producing smart, data-based storytelling with a special focus on COVID-19.

A veteran journalist with two of the leading media organisations in the region – she was the first woman bureau chief, the first female news editor of the Nation Media Group and was the founding editor of the dally newspaper the Star. She co-founded East Africa’s first budget and public finance fact checking and verification initiative, PesaCheck. She is an advisory board member of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism Oxford; the Aga Khan University’s Graduate School of Media and Communications; the British Council’s First News Worldwide program and advised on Open Society’s Fiscal Governance Program and the ICFJ’s State of Technology in Global Newsrooms survey. She is a jury member for WAN-IFRA Africa Digital Media Awards, EJC’s MoneyTrail among others. Gicheru is a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University, a Reuters Institute Journalism Fellow at Oxford University, and a 1992 IWMF Courage in Journalism award winner.

Ela Stapley is a digital security advisor working with the International Women’s Media Foundation helping them to shape their online harassment initiative. She is the coordinator of this course, Online Harassment: Strategies for Journalists’ defense. Ela trains journalists around the globe on digital security issues and provides one-to-one support for media workers in need of emergency assistance. She is interested in finding ways to help journalists, especially freelancers, be engaged with digital safety and helping them to be more secure as they go about their work. Ela is also part of the emergencies team at the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Prior to working in digital security, Ela was a freelance journalist, and a teacher. She holds an MA in International Journalism from Cardiff University, UK.

Myra Abdallah is a Lebanese journalist and gender rights activist. She is currently the Women in News communications manager for the Arab region at the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA), the Head of Media Department at the Arab Foundation for Freedoms and Equality (AFE), and an online harassment advisory board member at the International Women’s Media Foundation (IWMF). She is also a Lebanese independent journalist and a trainer, specialized in gender literacy, digital and organizational security, gender bias in media, gender-based violence against sexual minorities and protection of women journalists.