Sofi Álvarez, SembraMedia
Sofi Álvarez is Director of Initiatives at the media support organisation SembraMedia, leading the design and implementation of strategic projects and investigations that strengthen independent journalism in Latin America. Her work combines research, innovation, and collaboration to advance media sustainability across the region.
Anoosha Ansari, Les Voix de l’Avenir
Anoosha Ansari is an Afghan journalist living in France. After nearly a decade in Afghan media, she now focuses on women’s rights and integration. She is developing Les Voix de l’Avenir (engl. Voices of the Future), a podcast amplifying the voices of Afghan women in exile.
Kirill Artemenko, Paper
Kirill Artemenko is a cofounder and CEO of Paper, an independent media and IT company founded in St.Petersburg in 2012, which has now been partly in exile since 2022. Paper includes local media Paperpaper.io and Paper Kartuli, IT service Paper VPN and Paper Agency for selling ads and other digital services to clients.
Maziar Bahari, IranWire
Maziar Bahari is the founder and publisher of iranwire, a news site run by Iranian journalists in the diaspora and citizen journalists inside Iran. The Iranian-Canadian journalist and documentary filmmaker was a reporter for Newsweek from 1998 to 2011. He was incarcerated by the Iranian government in 2009 for his reporting. His best-selling memoir was turned into the movie “Rosewater” by Jon Stewart.
Fereidoon Bashar, ASL19
Fereidoon Bashar is the Executive Director of ASL19, a technology and exile-media organisation dedicated to countering digital authoritarianism, with a focus on Iran. He works on designing and developing solutions with and for various communities to exercise and safeguard their digital and human rights.
Mohammad Bassiki, SIRAJ
Mohammad Bassiki is an investigative journalist, founder and executive director of Syrian Investigative Reporting for Accountability Journalism (SIRAJ), and a member of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). His investigative reporting has earned international recognition, including nominations for the European Press Prize 2026, GIJN’s Shining Light Award 2025 and Daphne Caruana Galizia Journalism Prize 2022.
Patrick Boehler, Gazzetta
Patrick Boehler designs services using the craft of journalism: interviewing, verification, source-building, narrative judgment. He founded Gazzetta, a media research organisation, in 2024 to study how information services stay relevant where that is hardest: under autocracy, in exile, or cut off from the people they aim to serve.
Aidar Botagarov, OSCE RFoM
For more than ten years Aidar Botagarov worked as the Adviser to the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media (RFoM) and covered issues pertaining to freedom of expression, freedom of the media and safety of journalists in Eastern Europe, South Caucasus and Russia. He is currently an advising consultant to the RFoM, where he also leads the project “Enhancing Protection of Journalists under Severe Political Pressure.” Before joining the RFoM, Aidar worked for the OSCE field operation and in the non-governmental sector in Kazakhstan.
Ali Çelikkan, Reporters without Borders
Ali Çelikkan is a journalist from Turkey. He has worked for Cumhuriyet in Istanbul and taz in Berlin. Since 2017, he has also worked with Reporters Without Borders (RSF) in Germany. Since 2026, he is working on transnational repression (TNR) within RSF Germany’s assistance desk.
Kamal Chomani, The Amargi
Kamal Chomani is a PhD candidate at Leipzig University and editor-in-chief of The Amargi.
Izzy Cutts, The Foreign Policy Centre
Izzy Cutts is the Policy and Parliamentary Affairs Manager at the Foreign Policy Centre (FPC), an independent, non-partisan think tank based in the United Kingdom. She leads FPC’s work on transnational repression and chairs the Steering Committee of the “Tackling TNR in the UK” Working Group.
Alexenia Dimitrova, Journalist and Media Trainer
Alexenia Dimitrova is an award-winning journalist and an Open-Source-Intelligence (OSINT) lecturer in journalism. She is a member of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and shared Pulitzer award holder (2017) with the ICIJ for their work on the Panama Papers. She has authored five non-fiction books and two manuals.
Alena Epifanova, DGAP
Alena Epifanova is a research fellow at the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP), studying global trends in state internet control and threats to democracy. She focuses on Russia as a model for digital authoritarianism, advises on the “Freedom on the Net” report and sits on SplinterCon’s program committee.
Maral Jekta, JX Fund
Maral Jekta is Managing Director of the JX Fund, which supports independent media in exile. She has more than fifteen years of experience in media development, democracy support and conflict-sensitive programming in Germany and the MENA region. Previously, she was Senior Researcher and Program Lead at Tehran Bureau and held research and project management roles at ufuq.de and Media in Cooperation and Transition (MiCT). Her work focuses on strengthening the editorial independence, financial sustainability, organisational resilience, and audience access of exiled media.
Ketevan Kavtaradze, Sinatle Media
Ketevan Kavtaradze is a Georgian business executive and the CEO of Sinatle Media, a solidarity and sustainability network of 22 independent online media outlets across Georgia. For more than a decade, Ketevan Kavtaradze has held senior leadership roles across the business sector.
Khaled Khalaf, Marges Syriennes
Khaled Khalaf is a Syrian journalist based in France and participant in SINGA’s programme Voix en Exil. He is the co-founder of Marges Syriennes, an independent bilingual media project focusing on underreported Syrian issues, freedom of information, environment reporting and social media.
Lisa Kretschmer, Reporters without Borders
Lisa Kretschmer is Head of Advocacy at Reporters without Borders (RSF) Germany. She previously led global research on media transparency and has worked in the human rights sector for GIZ, the Bundestag and LMU. She studied Political Communication and Economics at the Freie Universität Berlin, with research in Israel, Denmark and the Netherlands.
Sergey Medvedev, JINN
Sergey Medvedev leads the Journalists in Need Network (JINN), the Berlin Hub for Exile Media and Collaborative Journalism. Founded in 2022, after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, JINN advocates for at-risk journalists and advises displaced newsrooms. With other media hubs, Sergey Medvedev examines the sustainability of exile media.
Eva Nemela, Körber-Stiftung
Eva Nemela is a member of the Executive Board of Körber-Stiftung. Before her appointment in 2025, she headed the Department of Age and Demographics and managed the KörberHaus in Hamburg-Bergedorf. She serves on the boards of the German Children and Youth Foundation, the German Foundation for Musical Life, the Foundation for Civic Engagement in Bergedorf, and the Herbert and Elsbeth Weichmann Foundation.
Vania Pigeonutt, taz Panter-Stiftung
Vania Pigeonutt is a Mexican journalist, author, and analyst specialising in organized crime, political violence, and human rights. For more than a decade, she reported from the Mexican state Guerrero. She co-founded the memorial platform mataranadie.com and the independent outlet Amapola Periodismo. She has lived in exile in Berlin since 2022 and currently works as Project Manager at the taz Panter Foundation.
Ahmad Quraishi, AFJC
Ahmad Quraishi is an award-winning Afghan journalist with more than 20 years of experience. He is the founder and executive director of the Afghanistan Journalists Center (AFJC), where he has led efforts to defend press freedom and promote independent journalism in Afghanistan since 2009.
Aniss Ould Rabah, SINGA
Aniss Ould Rabah is a former journalist at Guiti News and currently coordinates Voix en Exil at SINGA. He supports exiled journalists in developing media projects, strengthening their professional networks, and continuing to provide independent reporting from exile.
Melisa Rabanales, freelance journalist
Melisa Rabanales is a Guatemalan journalist based in Buenos Aires. Her work focuses on violence, migration and human rights. As a Gabo Award winner, she has worked with Radio Ambulante, and her work has appeared in outlets such as AJ+ Español, BBC Mundo, and Revista Crisis, among others.
Aigulle Sembaeva, JINN
Aigulle Sembaeva is a civil society professional and network builder working at the intersection of media, journalism and civic engagement across Central Asia and Eastern Europe. She works together with journalists, activists and reformers from the region to share experiences and drive change.
Rinat Tuhvatshin, Kloop
Rinat Tuhvatshin is the co-founder and CEO of Kloop, a leading investigative media outlet from Kyrgyzstan. From exile, he continues to work on AI tools for journalism and media resilience under authoritarian pressure. Kyrgyz authorities declared him “extremist” and tried to issue an Interpol Red Notice against him.
Renaud de Villaine, OHCHR
Renaud de Villaine has been working for more than fifteen years with the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) of the United Nations in various positions, including desk officer on African countries, field coordinator, and legal advisor to United Nations commissions of inquiry. He is currently serving as advisor on media freedom and safety of journalists.
Steffen Wurzel
Steffen Wurzel is a foreign policy radio correspondent at Deutschlandfunk’s parliamentary office in Berlin. Before he was a radio correspondent at ARD’s radio office in Istanbul, Turkey (2010–2011) and in Shanghai, China (2016–2021).
Nelson Rauda Zablah, GFNE
Nelson Rauda is a Salvadoran journalist. He has been in exile since May 2025, when arrest warrants were issued in connection with his reporting on President Bukele’s dealings with gangs. As a previous Editor of Digital Content at El Faro, his work has appeared in The New York Times and The Guardian. He now leads Digital Media Strategy at the Global Fund for a New Economy (GFNE).
Sahar Zand, freelance journalist
Sahar Zand is an award-winning British-Iranian investigative journalist and documentary filmmaker with deep experience reporting on human rights abuses and transnational repression. As a former refugee targeted by Iran, her work includes Sky News’ “Dirty Work” investigation into Interpol misuse.
Viera Zuborova, CORRECTIV.Exile
Viera Zuborova is the director of CORRECTIV.Exile, a special section of the CORRECTIV media house, where she is responsible for leading efforts to support journalists in exile. She specialises in populism, extremism, social movements, political communication, and hate speech research. Since 2015, Viera has been a regular columnist at the online newspapers Aktuality.SK and Visegrad Insight, and works as a political analyst for various media in Central Europe.