Confirmed! Our annual conference in New York City. May 16-17, 2024
Under the banners - Journalism in Ukraine: Telling the War Stories that Matter (Day 1) and Why We are Afraid of Untold Stories (Day 2) - our conference will feature many power panels and fireside chats with journalists, diplomats, experts and commentators. We will pinpoint the state of the war in Ukraine, what needs to be done immediately to improve the dire state of the Ukrainian media sector, and how we move from conversation to conversion. The conference will take place amid the multi billion dollar ask for the reconstruction of Ukraine, and as the beleaguered media sector tries to navigate extremely difficult challenges created by the war.
Day One will be held at the iconic Ukrainian Institute of America on Central Park East. Day Two - focused on improving storytelling and forging a path forward for the Ukrainian media sector - is by invitation only and for media workers and will be held at another iconic site in midtown Manhattan.
Each year, UJANA hosts a keynote speaker from the media sector in Ukraine. This year we are pleased to announce the participation of Sevgil Musaieva, Editor-in-Chief of the leading online publication, Ukrainska Pravda. She is also the recipient of the Committee to Protect Journalists 2022 International Press Freedom Award. We also welcome BBC News anchor and journalist Helena Humphrey as a moderator.
Other confirmed speakers include: Time magazine correspondent Simon Shuster; Viktoriia Romaniuk, Deputy Director at Kyiv Mohyla School of Journalism and Deputy Chief Editor of Stopfake.org. Journalist and author Peter Pomerantsev, Senior Fellow - Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University and author of How to Win an Information War. Diane Francis, author and editor-at-large at the National Post.
To help us understand the shifting political sands in Europe are two special guests from France - Julien Pain of FranceInfo and Maurin Picard, US correspondent for Le Soir, Le Figaro and Sud Ouest. From Germany, political analyst/Sr Fellow at CEPA Jessica Berlin.
Also - Ukrainian writer, researcher and curator Sasha Dovzhyk, editor of the London Ukrainian Review. Vadym Karpiak, presenter, ICTV Kyiv. Amb. Sergiy Kyslytsya, Permanent Representative of Ukraine to the United Nations. And many more!
Once again this year, some sessions will be co-branded with the Atlantic Council. We are also pleased to have as conference moderators and facilitators Farzana Baduel, CEO and Founder of Curzon PR of London and Andrew D’Anieri of the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center.
Agenda - Day One (Thursday, May 16, 2024)
Theme of the Day: Journalism in Ukraine: Telling the War Stories that Matter
Venue: Ukrainian Institute of America, 2 E 79th St, New York, NY 10075
09:00-09:30: Coffee and light snacks
09:30-10:00: Official opening
Welcome remarks: UIA
Welcome remarks: UJANA (Jurij Klufas)
Intro - Michael Bociurkiw and Farzana Baduel, Conference Co-Chairs
Brief video: Two years of war
10:00-11:00: Opening Power Panel - The Correspondent’s Perspective on Covering War
Simon Shuster, Correspondent, Time Magazine
Alan Chin, Photographer & Writer (who’s covered the war for Business Insider and Foreign Policy)
Vadym Karpiak, anchor ICTV (Kyiv)
Moderator: Helena Humphrey, BBC News
11:00-11:15: Coffee break
11:15-12:00: Talking About Ecocide as a Tool of War
Speaker: Dr Sasha Dovzhyk, Editor, London Ukrainian Review
Moderated by: Katya Soldak, Editorial Director, Forbes Media International Editions
12:00-12:45: Onsite Lunch w/Talk
Diane Francis, Author; Editor-at-Large - National Post; Sr. Fellow - Atlantic Council
Moderated by: Andrew D’Anieri - Atlantic Council
*Lunch generously catered by Serafina Fabulous Pizza, 1022 Madison Ave., NYC 10075
1245-13:30: Whoever Tells the Story Writes History
Katie Orenstein - Founder and CEO, The OpEd Project
In conversation with: Farzana Baduel - CEO and Founder, Curzon PR
13:30-14:45: Ukraine keynote: Truth in Journalism in Time of War
Sevgil Musaieva, Editor in Chief, Ukrainska Pravda
Introduced by: Gulnoza Said, Committee to Protect Journalists
In conversation with: Michael Bociurkiw, Regular Contributor - CNN Opinion; Global Affairs Analyst
1445-15:00: Coffee Break
15:00-16:30: Power Panel: Journalism in the Age of Disinformation
Peter Pomerantsev - Journalist; Author (How to Win an Information War)
Viktoriia Romaniuk - Deputy Director, Kyiv Mohyla School of Journalism; Deputy Chief Editor, Stopfake.org
Jessica Berlin - Geopolitical/Security Expert; Sr Fellow, Center for European Policy Analysis
Moderated by: Helena Humphrey, BBC News
16:30-16:45: Video tribute to fallen journalists
17:00-19:00: Evening Program
Fireside chat with Amb. Sergiy Kyslytsya, Permanent Representative of Ukraine to the United Nations. With Melissa Ricci and Michael Bociurkiw - Co-hosts of Global Impact
Wines of the Black Sea region and bites
** A special thanks to the Permanent Mission to the UN of the Republic of Moldova
Agenda - Day Two (Friday, May 17, 2024)
Theme of the Day: Why We Should be Afraid of Untold Stories
Venue: Midtown Manhattan, NYC
*** For media workers and by invitation only
08:00-08:15: Registration
0830-09:30: Creating the best stories for the digital space
Speaker will be introduced on site.
Moderated by: Farzana Baduel, Curzon PR
09:30-10:15: Fireside chat: Seizing or Freezing Russian Central Bank Assets - Evolving landscape and what you need to know.
Speaker will be introduced on site
Moderated by: Julie Tsirkin, Congressional Correspondent, NBC News
10:15-10:30: Coffee Break
10:30-11:30: Shifting Sands: How Geopolitics Reshape Ukraine’s News Landscape
Maurin Picard (France) - US correspondent for Le Soir, Le Figaro and Sud Ouest.
Jessica Berlin (Germany) - Geopolitical/Security Expert; Sr Fellow, Center for European Policy Analysis
Ayla Jean Yackly - Financial Times (Istanbul)
In conversation with Olena Kalabania
11:30-12:30: Journalism in the Age of Fake News
Jon-Lee Anderson, Staff Writer, The New Yorker
Viktoriia Romaniuk, Deputy Director - Mohyla School of Journalism (Kyiv); Deputy Chief Editor - Stop Fake
Julien Pain, Journalist - FranceInfo, author of the program Vrai ou Faux (True or False)
Liubov Tsybulska, First Head, Centre for Strategic Communication and Information Security - Ministry of Culture and Information Policy
Moderator: Elina Beketova, Democracy Fellow - Center for European Analysis
12:30-13:15: Luncheon discussion: Ukraine - Temporarily Occupied Territories- What we Know so Far
Speaker: Elina Beketova, Democracy Fellow - Center for European Analysis
13:15-15:00: Panel and Discussion: The Future of Journalism in Ukraine
Sevgil Musaeva, Ukrainska Pravda
Kristina Berdynskykh, Freelance Journalist (Kyiv)
Andrew Nynka, Editor-in-Chief - The Ukrainian Weekly/Svoboda
Moderated by: TBA
15:00-15:30: Break
16:00-20:00-: Closing action items discussion (focus Ukrainian diaspora media)
18:00-21:00: Evening informal networking event (Happy hour at Ted’s is 16:00-19:00)
Ted’s Montana Grill, 110 West 51st Street, New York, NY 10020
Speakers & Moderators
Sevgil Musaieva
Ukraine Keynote Speaker
Editor-in-Chief, Ukrainska Pravda
Recipient of the Committee to Protect Journalists 2022 International Press Freedom Award
Sevgil is editor-in-chief of Ukrainska Pravda, Ukraine’s leading independent online newspaper covering politics, economics, and culture – and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
After Russia started its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Musaieva mobilized her team to deliver truthful and unbiased reporting to their audiences, which increased manyfold in the first days and weeks of the war. She launched the English-language version of the outlet – whose name means “Ukrainian Truth” – to respond to international demand for factual and timely information on and from Ukraine.
Before joining Ukrainska Pravda, Sevgil served as a business reporter for the newspaper Delo (Happenings), the weekly Vlast Deneg (Power Money), and Forbes Ukraine, where she covered corruption in the oil and gas industries, among other topics. She also co-authored a book on Crimean Tatar leader Mustafa Dzhemilev. Sevgil is a member of the Crimean Tatars, an ethnic group facing persecution within Russian-occupied Crimea.
Sevgil has worked relentlessly since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Under her leadership, Ukrainska Pravda’s journalists have continued their reporting efforts despite Russia’s declared ban on the publication and the dangers of frontline reporting in an active war. In June 2022, she and a colleague received death threats following the publication of an investigative report.
Two of Ukrainska Pravda’s previous chief editors, Pavel Sheremet and Georgy Gongadze, have been murdered in relation to their work.
Sevgil was a 2019 Harvard University Nieman Fellow and is a six-time winner of the Presszvanie prize for economic journalism in Ukraine. She also received the Anthony Moskalenko Memorial Award for her contribution to the development of Ukrainian journalism, and Time magazine featured her as one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2022.
Jon Lee Anderson
Staff Writer - The New Yorker
Jon Lee, a staff writer, began contributing to The New Yorker in 1998. Since then, he has covered conflicts in numerous places for the magazine, including Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Angola, Somalia, Sudan, Mali, and Liberia. He has also reported frequently from Latin America, writing about Rio de Janeiro’s gangs, the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, an isolated tribe in Peru’s Amazon, and a Caracas slum, among other subjects, and has written Profiles of Augusto Pinochet, Fidel Castro, Hugo Chávez, and Gabriel García Márquez. He is the author of several books, including “Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life,” “Guerrillas: Journeys in the Insurgent World,” “The Fall of Baghdad,” and “The Lion’s Grave: Dispatches from Afghanistan.” He is the co-author, with Scott Anderson, of two books, “War Zones: Voices from the World’s Killing Grounds” and “Inside the League.” He has been honored by the Overseas Press Club, and in 2013 he was awarded a Maria Moors Cabot Prize for outstanding reporting on Latin America and the Caribbean. He began his reporting career in 1979, in Peru, followed by several years in Central America, and has maintained a close relationship to the region ever since, reporting from there frequently and giving journalism workshops to Latin-American reporters.
Simon Shuster
Senior Correspondent - Time Magazine
Simon has reported from Russia and Ukraine for 17 years, most of that time as a staff writer for Time Magazine. His coverage of the war began in 2014, when he was the first foreign journalist to arrive in Crimea as Russian troops took over the peninsula. In 2019, he met and interviewed Volodymyr Zelensky for a profile of his presidential campaign, then continued covering his administration in the years that followed, first traveling to the war zone with the President in April 2021, as the Russians gathered their armies at the border. When the full-scale invasion began the following year, Simon spent months embedded with the President’s team, securing unparalleled access to their compound in Kyiv, where he wrote The Showman, his first book.
Helena Humphrey
Anchor, Senior Journalist, BBC News
Helena is an Anchor and Senior Journalist for BBC News based in Washington D.C. She has previously held positions including Global Correspondent at NBC News and Chief Anchor at Euronews. Alongside her career in journalism, Helena has also worked in humanitarian affairs across Africa and Asia for the United Nations and Red Cross.
Katie Orenstein
Founder and CEO, The OpEd Project
Katie writes and speaks frequently about the intersection of media and mythology – that is, what we think is fact or fiction and how that shapes our ideas about politics, culture and history. She has contributed to the op-ed pages of the New York Times, Washington Post and Miami Herald. Her commentaries on women, politics, popular culture, mythology and human rights have been nationally syndicated and appear in anthologies. She has lectured at Harvard and Stanford universities, and appeared on ABC TV World News, Good Morning America, MSNBC, CNN and NPR All Things Considered. A graduate of Harvard (MA) and Columbia (MA) universities, she is the author of Little Red Riding Hood Uncloaked: Sex, Morality & the Evolution of a Fairy Tale, which explores stories told about women over 500 years across multiple continents, and how they shape our lives today. It has been translated into multiple languages and is under consideration for a television series. Newsweek called it “revelatory,” The Wall Street Journal called it “beguiling,” and feminist author Naomi Wolf called it “laid back, readable brilliance.” Katie has lived and worked around the world and particularly in Haiti, where she traveled as a folklore student and journalist in the 1990s, during a time of political upheaval. As a result of that experience, she has reported extensively on Haiti; organized fact-finding delegations for journalists, scholars and lawmakers; and consulted with the United Nations human rights mission. In 1996, she worked with a team of international human rights lawyers to assist victims of military and paramilitary violence in seeking justice. She investigated tortures, rapes, political assassinations and massacres; interviewed hundreds of victims, witnesses and alleged criminals; and coordinated lawyers’ and victims’ efforts to build cases against their persecutors. She has written about some of these cases and their aftermaths in Haiti and in the United States. Katie has received a Peabody-Gardner Fellowship, Tinker Grant and a Cordier Essay Prize (from Columbia University), and was a finalist for the 2004 Prize for Promise, designed “to identify young women, aged 21-35,of great promise and vision who could... become world leaders in their respective fields.” She is a fellow with The Woodhull Institute for Ethical Leadership, a recipient of The Diana P Scott Integrity in Action Award, and a fellow of Echoing Green, which selected The OpEd Project as one of 19 of the most innovative social enterprises worldwide, out of a pool of 1500 applicants.
Ayla Jean Yackley
Journalist (Istanbul)
Ayla is a freelance journalist who has been based in Turkey for more than two decades, covering politics and the economy. She mainly writes for the Financial Times, and her work has also appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Economist, Foreign Affairs and other publications. Previously, she was a correspondent for Reuters and Bloomberg News.
Peter Pomerantsev
Senior Fellow at the SNF Agora Institute, Johns Hopkins University
Peter specializes on propaganda past and present- and how to beat it. He is the author of “Nothing is True and Everything is Possible”, “This is Not Propaganda” and, most recently, “How to Win an Information War, the Propagandist who Outwitted Hitler.” He is the winner of the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize, the Gordon Burn and European Press Prizes. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He was born in Kyiv, raised in London and lives in Maryland
Sasha Dovzhyk
Editor, London Ukrainian Review
Sasha is a Ukrainian writer, editor, and cultural manager. She holds a PhD in English and Comparative Literature from Birkbeck, has taught at Birkbeck and UCL SSEES, worked as a special projects curator at the Ukrainian Institute London, and edited three books. Her writing has also appeared in the New York Times, Los Angeles Review of Books, Guardian, New Lines, Index of Censorship, CNN and others. She edits the London Ukrainian Review. Having lived in London for nine years, she has recently moved back to Ukraine to help set up INDEX: Institute for Documentation and Exchange.
Jessica Berlin
Political Analyst; Sr Fellow, Center for European Policy Analysis
Jessica is a political analyst, founder of the strategy consultancy CoStruct, and a board member at the German-Ukrainian Society and at the fintech company Bridge Technologies. She has over 17 years' experience in security, foreign policy, and economic partnership development in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and North America, including with the US Senate, US Department of Defense, the German aid agency, and as a consultant to public, private, and nonprofit organizations. In response to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, she paused her consulting work and returned to the policy world, traveling frequently to Ukraine as a political analyst and strategy advisor. In 2024, the Lithuanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs awarded her the Diplomatic Star of Lithuania in honor of her work in support of Ukrainian victory and European security.Jessica’s commentary has been featured by CNN, BBC, the Washington Post, DW News, NPR, Le Monde, Al Jazeera English, ZDF, Tagesspiegel, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, et al. Her TEDx on the transatlantic democratic crisis has been described as “one of the most powerful and inspiring TED talks.” She holds an MSc in Political Economy of Emerging Markets from King’s College London, a BA in International Relations from Tufts University, and speaks five languages.
Sergiy Kyslytsya
Permanent Representative of Ukraine to the United Nations
Sergiy has served in a wide variety of senior posts in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine - including Deputy Foreign Minister, and Director-General for International Organizations. He has served at the Embassy of Ukraine in Washington, DC as Minister-Counselor, DCM (Political), and Political Counselor. He currently serves as a non-resident Ambassador to Trinidad and Tobago and to the Bahamas.
Melissa Ricci
Co-Host - Global Impact Show
Melissa is a Producers Guild of America Award Winner and is currently producer and co-host of Global Impact, a current affairs talk show in its fourth season is co-hosted with Michael Bociurkiw.The show is distributed and streaming through @knekt TV, Apple TV and Roku. To date, Global Impact has had as guests the current Ukraine Foreign Affairs Minister Dmytro Kuleba, ex-CIA officer Laura Ballman, the world’s top humanitarian diplomat, Peter Mauer, among many others. Globally, the show is listened to in more than 50 countries, with a majority of listeners in the US and Canada. Based in LA, Melissa has worked as a Hollywood Entertainment Host for the '3 Minute Update' Show and appeared in several US films and TV shows. As well as being in front of the camera, Melissa produced the AwardWinning Romantic Comedy "LES BOUFFONS" in which she played the lead. The film won the LAURA ZISKIN Fellowship Award from the Producers Guild of America.
Alan Chin
Photojournalist, Writer
Alan was born and raised in New York City’s Chinatown. Since 1996, he has worked in China, the former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Egypt, Iraq, Central Asia, and Ukraine, as well as extensively in the United States. He is a contributing photographer to many publications, an Adjunct Professor at the New School Schools of Public Engagement and Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, and his work is in the collections of the Museum Of Modern Art and the Detroit Institute of Arts. The New York Times twice nominated Alan for the Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the Kosovo conflict in 1999 and 2000. Alan is a 2022 Magnum Foundation Counter-Histories grantee. He is also the Managing Director of Facing Change: Documenting America / Documenting Detroit, a community-based photojournalism initiative; winner of the 2017 Knight Foundation Detroit Arts Challenge and 2019 and 2020 National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) grants, as well as 2019, 2020, and 2021 Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs grantee.
Michael Bociurkiw
Global Affairs Analyst; Sr. Fellow - Atlantic Council; Co-host of Global Impact
Michael is a global affairs analyst and Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council. He has been based in Ukraine since before Russia’s full scale invasion in February, 2022. From 2014-2015, he served as spokesperson for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine. He is a regular contributor to CNN Opinion and a frequent guest on BBC World Television, BBC World Service Radio, CNN, CNN International, MSNBC and other global media outlets. Previously, Michael served as a global spokesperson for UNICEF in Geneva and in various duty stations around the globe, including in the West Bank and Gaza. As a journalist, he worked as a staff member at the South China Morning Post, Asia Times and Winnipeg Free Press. His bylines have appeared in Forbes, the Globe and Mail and the Los Angeles Times. Michael is a board member of the Ukrainian Journalists Association of North America and the East Europe Foundation. His first book, Digital Pandemic, was published in 2022.
Vadym Karpiak
Anchor, ICTV (Kyiv)
Vadym earned a bachelor’s degree in the theory of culture, and in 2001 he became a master of political science at the appropriate department of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. He has worked in radio in Ukraine and at TV channels 1+1 and 112. One of Ukraine’s most distinguished journalists, and who has seen his home destroyed in a Russian missile attack, is host of ‘Freedom of Speech’ for ICTV - one of the most popular current affairs programmes in Ukraine.
Farzana Baduel
CEO and co-founder of Curzon PR.
Farzana is the CEO and co-founder of Curzon PR. Established in 2009, Curzon provides strategic communications advisory across corporates, culture and charities. Whilst headquartered in London, the firm has a global reach. Farzana is the Resident Public Relations expert for the University of Oxford's entrepreneurship centre at Said Business School. She is a Chartered PR practitioner, has been awarded an Honorary Fellowship with the CIPR, and is a Fellow of the CIM. Farzana has won multiple awards in PR, entrepreneurship, innovation, and leadership. She is a trustee and serves on the board of the British Asian Trust, founded by King Charles III to tackle poverty in South Asia. Farzana donates her time and expertise to several not-for-profit organisations and audiences on a voluntary basis. She believes in the power of storytelling for good and as a communication bridge to connect worlds."
Andrew D’Anieri
Resident Fellow - Atlantic Council Eurasia Center
Andrew is a resident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center, where he previously worked as assistant director facilitating the Center’s work on Ukraine, Central Asia, and Russia. He writes regularly for the Council’s UkraineAlert blog and has written for The Hill, New York Post, The Diplomat, and The National Interest. He is a regular commentator on global media outlets. He is a member of the Eurasia Foundation’s Young Professionals Network.Prior to joining the Council, Andrew served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Ukraine, where he taught English at a maritime academy. He previously held internships at Albright Stonebridge Group and in the US Senate. D’Anieri earned his bachelor’s degree in global studies and history from Colby College. He studied Russian in St. Petersburg, Russia and has served as a global ambassador for Ukrainian nonprofit organization Right to Protection.
Olena Kalabania
Director Institutional affairs and Communications at MCBG Conseil, Paris
Olena is a seasoned professional with over 15 years' experience in public affairs, strategic communications and media relations. Currently Olena is a Director Institutional affairs and Communications at MCBG Conseil, a leading Paris-based consultancy agency. Before joining MCBG, she worked for some of the world’s largest companies (Sanofi, Philip Morris, Nestlé), for the United Nations (UNESCO) and in non-profit organizations where she led the Responsible Mica Initiative. Olena was a Chief Media Officer at Ukraine Crisis Media Center, a leading Ukrainian media and communications platform.
Elina Beketova
Democracy Fellow - Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA)
Elina is an in-residence fellow with the Democracy Fellowship program at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA). Her research focuses on temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine after Russia’s full-scale invasion on February 24, 2022. Elina started her career as a print journalist in Crimea. Later she participated in the Benjamin Franklin Transatlantic Fellowship at Wake Forest University and the Global Undergraduate Exchange Program at the University of Mississippi. Elina worked as a journalist, editor, and TV-anchor for different news stations in Kharkiv and Kyiv, Ukraine. As a part of International Insight, the TV program Elina hosted, she conducted in-studio, Skype and field interviews with several prominent guests from around the globe. Now Elina contributes to the translator’s team of Ukrainska Pravda. Elina holds a master's degree in journalism from Kharkiv National University and a master's degree in clinical psychology from the Kyiv Institute of Modern Psychology and Psychotherapy.
Andrew Nynka
Editor-in-chief, The Ukrainian Weekly/Svoboda.
Andrew is the editor-in-chief of The Ukrainian Weekly and Svoboda. In that role, he has led both newspapers’ coverage of Russia’s full-scale war on Ukraine. He holds a Ph.D in journalism from the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland, a master’s degree in journalism from New York University, and won a Fulbright Fellowship to conduct doctoral research in Ukraine on journalists’ normative beliefs of the roles the press should play amid pluralism, propaganda, and war. He has taught journalism at the University of Maryland, the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, the Ukrainian Catholic University, and Zaporizhia National University. Andrew previously served as the executive director of the Society for Features Journalism, was a general assignment reporter for the Daily Record in Parsippany, N.J., and an education beat reporter for The Daily Journal in Vineland, N.J. He covered the 2004 Orange Revolution, the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Utah, and was in the country when Russia launched its full-scale war on Ukraine in February 2022. He has reported from inside The White House, Congress, the United Nations and a prison in Kharkiv, Ukraine. He covered the 9/11 terror attacks in New York City, and in 2003 broke the national story that the Pulitzer Prize board was considering taking the unprecedented step of revoking the 1932 award given to Walter Duranty of The New York Times.
Gulnoza Said
Committee to Protect Journalists - Europe and Central Asia Program Coordinator
Gulnoza is a journalist and press freedom advocate with over 20 years of experience in New York, Prague, Bratislava, and Tashkent. At CPJ, she has conducted several missions to countries in Europe and Central Asia, and advocated for greater press freedom and the release of jailed journalists at forums including the U.S. Congress, the United Nations, and the OSCE. Before joining CPJ in 2016, she was a journalist and covered issues including elections, politics, media, religion, and human rights with a focus on Central Asia, Russia, and Turkey. She also worked in communications for the United Nations Secretariat and the UNDP. Her op-eds, reports, and comments have appeared in CNN, the BBC, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, PBS, NBC, Voice of America, RFE/RL, Fergana, Eurasianet, and other outlets, and she authored the Uzbekistan chapter in a book on the study of social entrepreneurship
Julie Tsirkin
Congressional Correspondent, NBC News
Julie is an Emmy-award winning journalist and national NBC News correspondent reporting on Capitol Hill, appearing consistently on the Today Show, Nightly News, MSNBC, NBC News Now and on NBC News digital. Over the last five years she broke countless stories, from Republican Leader Mitch McConnell’s intent to acquit former President Donald Trump in his second impeachment trial, to Joe Manchin’s decision not to run for President, Republicans privately discussing a new term for “pro-life” after underperforming in elections due to abortion positions, and the Biden administration considering unilateral action at the southern border. Most recently Tsirkin scooped the Republican rebuttal to President Joe Biden’s 2024 State of the Union address, broke news that House Speaker Mike Johnson demanded a one-on-one meeting with Biden before considering foreign aid, and was first to report on several stories concerning funding to Ukraine and the Pentagon’s back-up plans on critical lethal aid. She conducted exclusive interviews with officials ranging from Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, to Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema and OMB Director Shalanda Young. Because of her extensive sourcing, Tsirkin often brings new voices into the fold at a time when diverse perspectives are needed most: she administered many bipartisan interviews with officials who appeared on NBC News platforms for the very first time, underscoring issues from climate change to cannabis reform to reproductive rights to Big Tech and artificial intelligence. In addition to daily coverage of the House and Senate, Tsirkin managed to file numerous enterprise reporting for air and digital, including Ukraine’s efforts to demine its land, a book ban in a small Kentucky coal-mining town, a movement to change the way victims of sex-trafficking are viewed, and the plight of one wildland firefighter championing better protections from the government. As a reporter Tsirkin was on the ground during both impeachments and subsequent trials of Trump, managed network coverage of the confirmation battle over Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination to the Supreme Court and spearheaded reporting on Congress’ efforts to mitigate the COVID-19 pandemic, having been the only reporter to cover the initial closed-door briefing with Anthony Fauci in January of 2020. You can also find her on the campaign trail, covering key races for control of Congress and reporting on the 2020 and 2024 Presidential elections. She was part of the NBC News team that won an Emmy award for “Outstanding Live Breaking News Coverage” and an Edward R. Murrow award for coverage of the January 6 Attack on the Capitol. Tsirkin is first-generation American and the daughter of immigrants from Ukraine. She is fluent in Russian and English and is proficient in Ukrainian. She graduated cum laude with her bachelor’s degree in political science and journalism and media studies from Rutgers University.
Diane Francis
Editor-at-Large - National Post; Sr. Fellow, Atlantic Council
Diane currently writes for the Financial Post, Kyiv Post, is Editor-at-Large at the National Post, and publisher of a twice-weekly, best-selling newsletter on Substack. She is the author of 10 books; a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council and a Director of the Hudson Institute’s Kleptocracy Initiative, both in Washington, DC; a Director at the Canada-US Law Institute at Case University Law School in Cleveland, OH; was a Director for two New York Stock Exchange-listed corporations: Aurizon Mines Ltd. and Lake Shore Gold Corporation, and is currently a Director with ZoomerMedia Limited on the Toronto Stock Exchange. She was also a Distinguished Visiting Professor for a decade at Metropolitan University’s business school in Toronto as well as a member of the faculty of Singularity University (executive education regarding exponential technologies) in Mountain View, California. She has received four honorary degrees, newspaper and magazine awards, and in 2019 was given the prestigious Tryzub Award by the Ukrainian community in Canada as a Friend of Ukraine.
Julien Pain
Journalist, Anchor - FranceInfo
Julien is a journalist specialized in fact checking. He's the anchorman of a program on misinformation called Vrai ou Faux on the French public channel franceinfo. Before that he created and presented the Observers tv program on France 24. He started his career as the head of the Internet security desk at Reporters Without Borders.
Maurin Picard
Journalist - Le Soir, Le Figaro and Sud Ouest
Maurin is a print journalist who has been the US correspondent for Le Soir, Le Figaro and Sud Ouest since 2011. With a degree in political science, he covers American politics for the French speaking media. He is author of historical essays. In 2019, he published an acclaimed investigation by Seuil into the as yet unsolved death of UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld, “Ils ont tué Monsieur H.”
Viktoria Romaniuk
Deputy director of Mohyla School of Journalism, Associate professor; Deputy Editor, StopFake
The organizers would like to acknowledge the generous support of sponsors - including the SUMA Federal Credit Union, the Self Reliance New York Federal Credit Union, the Ukrainian Self Reliance Federal Credit Union of Philadelphia and the Temerty Foundation. They also acknowledge the generosity of Club Quarters Hotels, New York City; the Permanent Mission of the Republic of Moldova to the United Nations; Turkish Airlines; Serafina Fabulous Pizza, NYC; Ted’s Montana Restaurant, NYC.
