Conference panellists and session chairs

Twitter: @Hackette7

Brigitte Alfter is co-founder and managing editor of Journalismfund.eu, a non-profit organisation dedicated to advancing investigative cross-border journalism in Europe and beyond. Journalismfund.eu also hands out research grants and provides networking opportunities, such as the annual Dataharvest working conference. Besides developing the organisation’s European activities, Alfter has spent the past decade working as a freelance cross-border journalist with teams of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), and as a journalism lecturer, mainly at the University of Roskilde. Previously, she worked as a Brussels-based EU correspondent for the Danish daily Information for four years. Alfter holds an MA in European journalism from the University of Southern Denmark.

Tom Brookes became executive director, strategic communications, of the European Climate Foundation’s (ECF) Executive Management Team in 2014, after having joined the organisation in 2009 as managing director of the Energy Strategy Centre. Brookes started his career as a journalist, covering technology, regulation, and broader European politics, and moved into communications, public affairs, and media relations in the late 1990s. He dealt with regulatory and standards issues at Alcatel, and later joined an international public affairs consultancy representing Microsoft as press spokesman and acting as political advisor to Microsoft’s CEO and general counsel. He also worked as director of government affairs, Europe, Middle East and Africa at Apple. Brookes is also senior advisor on international strategic communications for the ClimateWorks Foundation and executive director of the Global Strategic Communications Council.

Twitter: @kieranacooke

Kieran Cooke is a former senior foreign and economic correspondent for both the BBC and the Financial Times, as well as a member of the team of veteran journalists running the Climate News Network. This free and independent media service publishes daily stories on climate and energy issues. Its aim is to promote the fact-based coverage of climate change. Cooke also continues to contribute to the BBC and a wide range of international newspapers and radio networks. In recent years, he has focused on environmental issues, and has graduated with distinction in environmental conservation from Oxford University. He trains and mentors journalists around the world under the auspices of the UN Environment Programme and other organisations, including an extensive training programme for journalists in the Himalayan region.

Twitter: @dpomondi

Dagmar Dehmer is one of Germany’s most distinguished environmental journalists. Since 2001, she has worked as political editor at the German daily Tagesspiegel, responsible for environmental reporting, with a focus on climate change and energy transition. She was also in charge of establishing Tagesspiegel Background Energy & Climate, an exclusive policy briefing for the energy and climate sectors. She became head of corporate communications at the federal company for radioactive waste disposal (BGE) in October 2017.  In 2010, Dehmer won the Environment Media Award from the non-profit association Environmental Action Germany (DUH).

Twitter: @SonyaDiehn

Sonya Angelica Diehn is environment team leader at Deutsche Welle, Germany's international broadcaster, where she acts as lead editor on environmental topics in various mediums. She's worked as an environmental reporter and editor for more than a decade, focusing on biodiversity, climate change, and translating sustainability into daily life. Sonya has freelanced around the world, and previously worked as a reporter, bureau chief and environmental editor for the Courthouse News Service. She got her start in citizen journalism in 1999 working through social and environmental movements.

Twitter: @JamesFahn

James Fahn is the global director of Internews’ Environmental Programs and the executive director of Internews’ Earth Journalism Network (EJN). EJN is a global community of over 10,000 environmental reporters. It seeks to empower journalists, particularly those from developing countries, through training programmes, by establishing new networks of environmental journalists, and through a variety of other capacity building efforts. Fahn has also managed Internews’ Burma country programme for several years, and was the co-founder of the Thai Society of Environmental Journalists. He is the author of A Land on Fire, a book about the issues he covered and adventures he had as an award-winning journalist in Southeast Asia. Fahn has published stories in many newspapers, including The New York Times, Newsweek, The Economist, The Nation (Thailand) and The Jakarta Post. He is also an adjunct professor at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism.

Twitter: @lauriegoering

Laurie Goering edits the Thomson Reuters Foundation’s daily news website on the humanitarian and development impacts of climate change. As part of her work, she created and mentors a network of over 100 developing world climate change journalists. The website she runs has won a broad range of awards, including the Society of Publishers in Asia award in 2016 and the Asian Environmental Journalism award in 2013 and 2015. Prior to joining the Thomson Reuters Foundation in 2009, she worked for 15 years as a foreign correspondent for the Chicago Tribune newspaper based in New Delhi, Kuwait, Johannesburg, Rio de Janeiro, Havana, Mexico City, and London.

Twitter: @LarsGrotewold

Dr Lars Grotewold heads the Centre for Climate Change at Stiftung Mercator. Since 2009, when he joined the foundation and built up the Centre for Climate Change, Stiftung Mercator invested more than 80 mio. Euros in projects to deliver effective climate change mitigation. The foundation’s work focuses in particular on a successful implementation of the energy transition in Germany as a means to trigger ambitious climate change mitigation globally. Grotewold was responsible for the creation of numerous new institutions like the Agora Energiewende, Agora Verkehrswende, Clean Energy Wire or the Mercator Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change (MCC). He is a member of several advisory bodies to the Federal, State and regional governments. Being a molecular biologist by training, he used to work for several research institutes in Germany and the UK and also for the National Council for Science and Humanities in Cologne before joining Stiftung Mercator.

Twitter: @KataKarath

Kata Karáth is a freelance science journalist focusing on the complex connection between conservation, economics, and politics. Her articles have appeared in several publications, including Quartz, Science Magazine and New Scientist, and she has produced, or contributed to, a number of scientific and environmental documentaries that appeared in Quartz, BBC, Sky, Al Jazeera, and Animal Planet. She was Hungarian Science Writer of the Year nominated by the Club of Hungarian Science Journalists, and a finalist for the European Science Writer of the Year title in 2017. Karáth holds a BS in zoology from Szent István University in Hungary, and an MS in science journalism from City, University of London.

Twitter: @PPchef

Born in the United States, Craig Morris (@PPchef) has lived in Germany since 1992 and worked in the energy sector since 2001. He is currently a senior fellow at the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies in Potsdam, Germany, and is the co-author of Energy Democracy, a history of Germany’s Energiewende (energy transition) as a grassroots movement (Palgrave 2016). He has served as technical editor of both editions of IRENA’s REmap since 2013 and of the 2015 edition of Greenpeace’s Energy (R)evolution. In 2008, he cofounded Berlin’s PV Magazine; in 2010, Renewables International. In 2012, he became lead author of EnergyTransition.com. Since 2002, he has also authored articles and books in German and served as editor for numerous German periodicals in the energy sector. In 2014, he won the International Association of Energy Economists’ prize for energy journalism.

Twitter: @Tim_Nuthall

Tim Nuthall is the international communications director of the European Climate Foundation (ECF). He joined the organization in 2009 as the media manager. In his current role, he co-directs the work of a global network of communicators focused on climate and energy - the Global Strategic Communications Council (GSCC). The GSCC spans 14 countries and works to leverage traditional and social media in order to change the conversation on climate and energy. Nuthall is responsibile for network management, new media and the Americas. He began his career with the Labour Party in the UK, working as a political organizer and then in the press office, where he became head of press under Gordon Brown. He moved from London to Brussels in 2008 and worked for Fleishman Hillard as an account director. Tim studied at the Universities of Edinburgh and Vienna and has a Masters Degree in Politics and German.

Twitter: @meagham

Meaghan Parker is a long-standing member of the board of the Society of Environmental Journalists (SEJ), where she represents the associate members and serves as co-chair of the Membership Committee. SEJ, the leading North American association for environment and energy journalists, seeks to strengthen journalism to advance public understanding of environmental issues. Parker is senior writer and editor for the Environmental Change and Security Program (ECSP) at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington D.C., where she edits the think tank’s award-winning blog, the New Security Beat. She was lead editor and co-author of “A New Climate for Peace: Taking Action on Climate-Fragility Risks,” which was commissioned by the G7 Foreign Ministers; and the supervising producer of ECSP’s award-winning documentary trilogy, “Healthy People, Healthy Environment”.

Twitter: @markriceoxley69

Mark Rice-Oxley has been a journalist for 25 years, specialising in international affairs. After spells as a foreign correspondent working in Moscow, the Balkans, Paris, and London, he joined the Guardian as an international editor in 2003. In his current role as head of special projects, he leads a team of journalists investigating international trends and issues, ranging from climate change to refugees, and mental health to money laundering and inequality. He also engages in philanthropy-funded journalism, ensuring editorial independence and originality across Guardian projects underpinned by the generosity of British, European, and American foundations. 

Twitter: @arusbridger

Alan Rusbridger was editor-in-chief of the Guardian from 1995 to 2015, and led the news outlet to an Emmy and a Pulitzer Prize. He also received numerous prestigious awards himself, including the Liberty Human Rights Award, the European Press Prize, the Ortega y Gasset Journalism Award, and Harvard University’s Goldsmith Award or Lifetime Achievement. Rusbridger is now principal of Lady Margaret Hall at the University of Oxford. He is also a member of The Scott Trust, which owns the Guardian and the Observer. Rusbridger's career began at the Cambridge Evening News, where he trained as a reporter before first joining the Guardian in 1979. He was also a visiting fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford, and is a visiting professor of history at Queen Mary's College, London, and Cardiff University. He has honorary doctorates from Lincoln, Oslo, and Kingston Universities. In his final months as the Guardian’s editor-in-chief, Rusbridger self-imposed a deadline to actively address what he felt was a critical global concern —climate change. By launching a groundbreaking  information campaign endorsed by the secretary general of the United Nations, former US Vice President Al Gore, Prince Charles, and several Nobel Prize winners, he attracted more than 400 institutions and 2,000 individuals to commit 2.6 billion to environmentally responsible investment projects.

Twitter: @JulieSogaard

Julie Søgaard is chairperson of the The Danish Association of Energy and Environmental Journalists (FEM), and an independent climate and environmental journalist, communicator, and moderator. FEM was set up as the result of a merger of two former associations, Danish Environmental Journalists and Energy Journalists, E-1995. It aims to increase its members' knowledge of, and interest in, energy, climate, nature, and environment-related issues through organising meetings, debates, and study trips. Søgaard is also a former presenter and producer of the radio programme 'Klima og Miljø' (Climate and Environment) at P1, the station operated by the Danish Broadcasting Corporation. She holds an MS in geography and journalism from Roskilde University.

Claude Turmes is a member of the Greens/European Free Alliance Group in the European Parliament. The Luxembourgish politician has been an MEP since 1999. He held the position of vice president of the Greens/EFA Group between 2002 and 2014. Turmes is a member of the Committee on Industry, Research and Energy (ITRE) and the coordinator on energy issues for the Greens Group. He was rapporteur on the internal electricity market in 2003; the Directive on Renewable Energy Sources (RES) in 2008; and the Energy Efficiency Directive in 2012. In 2017, he was appointed rapporteur on the governance of the Energy Union, and shadow rapporteur on the revision of the RES Directive and the proposal on electricity market design. In February 2017, Turmes published the book ‘Transition énergétique – une chance pour l'Europe’ (‘Energy Transformation –  An Opportunity for Europe’).

Leena Yassin is a chemical engineer and was the youngest journalist from Africa to ever cover a UNFCCC COP. Her work is published in the three biggest newspapers of Sudan as well as international publications. Lina is a member of the Young African Leaders Initiative and Young Arab Leaders. She currently works as the regional coordinator for Climate Tracker in the MENA.