SPEAKER BIOS
Emcee
Ali Velshi
Ali Velshi is an award-winning journalist, anchor of “The 11 Hour with Ali Velshi” and Chief Data Reporter for MS NOW, and a weekly economics contributor to NPR’s “Here And Now.” He has covered multiple U.S. Midterm and Presidential elections and significant news stories around the globe, including extensive reporting from Israel during the war with Israel and Hamas, Ukraine and across Central and Eastern Europe during the Russian invasion, the Syrian refugee crisis from Turkey and Jordan, and the Iran Nuclear Deal in Tehran. He hosts the “Velshi Banned Book Club” on MS NOW, and the “Velshi Banned Book Club” podcast. Velshi is known for his immersive on-the-ground reporting and his interactive discussions with small groups, which form part of his ongoing series, Velshi Across America. He previously worked as an anchor and correspondent for Al Jazeera America and CNN. He has been nominated for multiple Emmy Awards, and is the recipient of two National Headliner Awards and a Society of Professional Journalists Sigma Delta Chi Award.
Featured Speakers
Katie Drummond
Katie Drummond is the global editorial director of WIRED, where she leads the editorial and revenue strategy for the brand across all channels and markets. Prior to joining WIRED, Drummond was the senior vice president of global news & entertainment at VICE, where she led the global expansion of VICE News across Latin America, Europe, and Asia, and oversaw all VICE digital brands including Noisey, Munchies, Rec Room, Motherboard, and Waypoint. Previously, Drummond held editorial leadership positions at several media outlets, including as deputy editor of Bloomberg.com and Associate Managing Editor of The Verge. Drummond has led newsrooms that have been honored with a Peabody Award, as well as several Emmys, Online Journalism Awards, ASMEs, and others.
Craig Silverman
Craig Silverman is an award-winning journalist and author, and one of the world’s leading experts on online disinformation and digital investigations. He is the co-founder of Indicator, a newsletter and website dedicated to exposing digital deception and equipping professionals with the knowledge and skills to help them investigate it.
Kashmir Hill
Kashmir Hill is a features writer at The New York Times and the author of YOUR FACE BELONGS TO US. She writes about the unexpected and sometimes ominous ways technology is changing our lives. She joined The Times in 2019, after having worked at Gizmodo Media Group, Fusion, Forbes Magazine, and Above the Law. Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker and The Washington Post. She has degrees from Duke University and New York University, where she studied journalism.
Kate Marino
Kate Marino is the Executive Editor of Axios’ National newsroom. Previously, she served as Axios’ Business Editor. Kate joined Axios in 2021 from Debtwire, where she held multiple leadership and reporting positions, including Managing Editor. She is based in New York City and is a graduate of the University of Pittsburgh.
Aja Whitaker-Moore
Aja Whitaker-Moore is deputy editor in chief at The Wall Street Journal. Aja joined the Journal in 2025 from Axios, where she most recently served as editor in chief overseeing their National, Local and Pro newsrooms. Aja joined Axios in 2020 as the managing editor of business coverage before becoming executive editor. She previously held a variety of senior reporting, editing and executive roles at Acuris, a global financial news and data company. She was editor in chief of fixed income for the group and the deputy editor in chief of Debtwire.
David Skok
Before founding The Logic in 2018, David Skok was the associate editor and head of editorial strategy at the Toronto Star. He has also served as the managing editor and vice-president of digital for the Boston Globe, and as the co-creator and director of digital for Global News. David is a leading thinker on digital transformation who co-published a seminal paper on disruption in the news industry with the Harvard Business School professor Clayton M. Christensen. David sits on the advisory board for the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University and has served as a juror for the Pulitzer Prizes in journalism.
Ben Smith
Ben Smith is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of Semafor. He was media columnist of the New York Times, and previously the founding editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed News. Ben has covered American politics for more than a decade at Politico and the New York Daily News among other outlets, and launched a number of political blogs.
Alex Burns
Alex Burns is POLITICO’s Senior Executive Editor, North America, overseeing coverage of the Trump administration and newsgathering across the United States and Canada. Burns is a former national political correspondent for The New York Times, where he reported on the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections, and the co-author of the bestselling book, “This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden and the Battle for America’s Future,” a deeply reported account of two presidents and the 2020 campaign. A graduate of Harvard College, where he was editor of the Harvard Political Review, Burns lives in Washington with his family.
Angela Murphy
Angela Murphy has been the Globe and Mail’s Foreign Editor for the past nine tumultuous years, steering a team of correspondents stationed around the world. She guides the Globe’s coverage of the United States and is leading the reporting on Donald Trump’s second term in office. In January 2026, she taught a course at Western University on the changing Canada/U.S. relationship as the winner of the Asper Fellowship in Media. Before becoming Foreign Editor, she did an award-winning project on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls and served as the Globe’s Toronto Editor. She has an undergraduate degree from the University of Toronto and a Masters of Arts in Journalism from Western University.
Vipal Monga
Vipal Monga is a markets editor at Bloomberg News, focused on credit markets, banking and the forces reshaping global finance. He has spent more than two decades as a journalist, covering financial markets, companies and the economy. Before joining Bloomberg, he was a reporter at The Wall Street Journal, covering corporate finance in New York and then from Toronto as WSJ’s Canada correspondent. His recent work has focused on the ways established institutions are being transformed by shifts in political and economic power.
Patrick Healy
Patrick Healy is the assistant managing editor for trust and standards at The New York Times, overseeing work to strengthen Times journalism and the credibility of fact-based reporting. Patrick was previously the deputy editor of the Times Opinion section, working with the columnists, guest essays and special projects like Opinion’s focus group series. In the Times newsroom, Patrick served as Politics editor during the 2020 U.S. presidential election and the 2018 midterm elections. As a reporter at the Times from 2005 to 2016, Patrick’s roles included national political correspondent and chief theater reporter. He was a reporter for the Boston Globe from 2000 through 2004, covering John Kerry’s presidential campaign, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and higher education. Patrick was a finalist for the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Beat Reporting, for his higher education coverage at The Globe. He received The Livingston Award in 2001 for his Globe series on Harvard honors and grade inflation, as well as prizes for his coverage of student suicide at M.I.T. Patrick began his career as a daily newspaper reporter in New Hampshire and spent several years as a reporter and editor at The Chronicle of Higher Education.
Adrienne LaFrance
Adrienne LaFrance is the executive editor of The Atlantic. She was previously a senior editor and staff writer at The Atlantic, and the editor of TheAtlantic.com. Before joining The Atlantic in 2014, LaFrance was an investigative reporter for several local and national news organizations, covering politics, technology, and media. She is a former reporter at WBUR, Hawaii Public Radio, Honolulu Weekly, Honolulu Civil Beat, and Nieman Journalism Lab. Her writing has also appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and several other newspapers and magazines.
Sally Buzbee
Sally Buzbee is the former executive editor of The Washington Post. Before joining the newsroom in June 2021, Buzbee was executive editor and senior vice president of the Associated Press. Under her leadership, the AP won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for international reporting for coverage of the war in Yemen.
Moderators
Hanna Rosin
Hanna Rosin is a journalist and podcast host, currently of Radio Atlantic — the flagship podcast of The Atlantic. Recently, she was the editorial director of audio at New York magazine. She began her audio career at NPR, serving as co-host of Invisibilia. Prior to making the switch to podcasts, she was a magazine and newspaper writer at outlets like The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Atlantic and The Washington Post. She won a National Magazine Award and many audio awards. She is also the author of two books, most recently “The End of Men: And The Rise of Women.” She lives in Washington, D.C. with her partner and a ragtag collection of pets with human names. She’s trying to be a potter!
Kris Reyes
Kris Reyes CBC’s correspondent based in New York. She is a multimedia journalist with more than 15 years of experience in broadcast and digital newsrooms in the U.S. and Canada, as a host, producer, anchor and reporter.
Brian Stelter
Brian Stelter is the chief media analyst for CNN Worldwide and the lead author of the Reliable Sources newsletter.
Shanelle Kaul
Shanelle Kaul is a Correspondent for CBS News Network and the host of The Uplift on Paramount+, where she tells stories of resilience, community, and change. Based in New York City, she writes This Didi Talks, a Substack newsletter that explores South Asian culture, identity, politics, and immigration. She also serves as the Vice-President of Programming for the Newswomen’s Club of New York where she hosts networking events for women in journalism.
Emily Bell
Emily Bell is the Founding Director of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia Journalism School, Leonard Tow professor of Journalism, and a leading thinker, commentator and strategist on digital journalism. The majority of Emily’s career was spent at Guardian News and Media in London working as an award winning writer and editor both in print and online. As editor-in-chief across Guardian websites and director of digital content for Guardian News and Media, Emily led the web team in pioneering live blogging, multimedia formats, data and social media ahead, making the Guardian a recognized pioneer in the field. She is co-author of Post Industrial Journalism: Adapting to the Present (2012) with C.W. Anderson and Clay Shirky. Emily is a trustee on the board of the Scott Trust, the owners of The Guardian, a member of Columbia Journalism Review’s board of overseers, an adviser to Tamedia Group in Switzerland, chair of the World Economic Forum’s Global Advisory Council on social media, and a member of Poynter’s National Advisory Board.
