| Anthony Adornato | Christopher Alan Ball | David Cohn |
| Brant Houston | Mitra Kalita | Damon Kiesow |
| Marc Lavallee | Jacob Ohara | Ryan Restivo |
| Elite Truong | Zach Wade | Jason Webb |
Click on a name above to jump to that speaker on the page.
Alphabetized by last name.
ANTHONY ADORNATO
Chair of Broadcast and Digital Journalism, Newhouse School, Syracuse University
Authenticity in the Age of Influencers: What Journalism Can Learn from Content Creators
Anthony Adornato is chair of the Broadcast and Digital Journalism Department at Syracuse University’s Newhouse School. In 2013, he created and launched one of the first courses focused on the use of mobile and social media in journalism. That course became the basis of his textbook (third edition is forthcoming): “Mobile and Social Media Journalism: A Practical Guide for Multimedia Journalism” (Routledge). Adornato was named a Fulbright Scholar in recognition of his international expertise on the topic. He’s a former television reporter, anchor, and producer.
CHRISTOPHER ALAN BALL
Assistant Professor of Augmented and Virtual Reality, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Stepping Into the News: AR/VR Storytelling in Journalism Today and Tomorrow
Dr. Christopher Ball is an assistant professor of augmented and virtual reality at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign within the Department of Journalism and the Institute of Communications Research. He is also a faculty affiliate with Informatics, the IMMERSE: Center for Immersive Computing, and the Center for Social and Behavioral Science.
His research interests involve the influence of emerging media technologies on society and how these new technologies can be utilized for research, education, and outreach purposes. More specifically, he studies interactive and immersive media technologies such as augmented reality, virtual reality, and video games for pro-social purposes. He has published collaborative research spanning many technology-related topics, demographic populations, and research methodologies. As a result, he has been published in various top-tier journals such as Telematics and Informatics; Information, Communication & Society; Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking; and Games and Culture. He also collaborates with journalists and journalism students to incorporate immersive media technologies into their storytelling.
DAVID COHN
Senior Director of Research & Development, Advance Local
Everything Old is New Again: Revisiting Audience Engagement with AI
David Cohn works at the intersection of emerging tech and storytelling — building scalable systems, impactful strategies, and future-facing products. He’s led innovation across AI, product, and audience engagement, from pioneering crowdfunding in journalism, mobile-first UX to deploying AI tools in modern newsrooms. David specializes in translating cutting-edge technology into ethical, operationally sound systems that serve people — not the other way around.
BRANT HOUSTON
Knight Chair Professor in Investigative and Enterprise Reporting, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
The Future of Storytelling
Brant Houston holds the Knight Chair in Investigative and Enterprise Reporting at the University of Illinois. He teaches investigative and advanced reporting in the Department of Journalism at UI. Houston also oversees the online newsroom at UI, CU-CitizenAccess.org, which serves as a lab for digital innovation and data journalism, and is an affiliated faculty member at UI’s National Center for Supercomputing Applications, Cline Center for Democracy and School of Information Sciences. Currently, Houston is working on projects involving nonprofit journalism and digital tools for news gathering.
Houston became Knight Chair in 2007 after serving for more than a decade as executive director of Investigative Reporters and Editors, and as professor at the University of Missouri School of Journalism. Before joining IRE, he was an award-winning investigative reporter at daily newspapers for 17 years.
Houston wrote “Computer-Assisted Reporting: A Practical Guide,” and co-authored “The Investigative Reporter’s Handbook.” He co-founded the Global Investigative Journalism Network and chairs its board of directors. He also co-founded and serves on the board of the Institute for Nonprofit News, an association of more than 130 nonprofit newsrooms in North America. He has taught and spoken about investigative and computer-assisted reporting at newsrooms and universities in 25 countries.
MITRA KALITA
URL-Media
What I Wish Journalism Students Knew: Beyond the Classroom
S. Mitra Kalita an award-winning journalist, media executive, prolific commentator, and author of two books. During the pandemic, Mitra founded two media companies to ensure communities of color are centered: Epicenter-NYC, which started as a newsletter to help New Yorkers navigate Covid and is now a multiplatform community journalism company, and URL Media, a growing network of Black and Brown owned media organizations that share content, distribution, and revenues to increase their long-term viability.
She’s on the board of the Philadelphia Inquirer, penned a regular workplace column for Time/Charter, was a consultant for season 3 of The Morning Show on Apple TV, and is a co-producer on the documentary, Vice is Broke. Mitra served as CNN Digital’s SVP, overseeing the national news, breaking news, programming, opinion, and features teams. Her background also spans the LA Times, where she was managing editor, Wall Street Journal, Quartz, and the Washington Post.
DAMON KIESOW
Knight Chair in Journalism Innovation, Missouri School of Journalism
Systems of Doubt: Ethics at the Intersection of Technology and Journalism
@dkiesow
Damon Kiesow is a digital media pioneer who specializes in aligning community information needs and business strategy in support of sustainable local journalism. He teaches a senior capstone in news product thinking, is authoring the first textbook in News Product Management and is a co-founder of the international News Product Alliance. Before joining Mizzou, he served as director of Product for McClatchy in Raleigh, North Carolina, where he reorganized the Product group and created the company’s first Product Design and User Experience Research teams.
MARC LAVALLEE
Founder & CEO, Lyra TK
Keynote Q&A and Panel Speaker
After 3½ years leading journalism tech grantmaking at Knight Foundation, Marc Lavallee is charting a new course: Lyra TK, a product development and consulting practice where media intersects with AI.
Marc was a Director of Journalism at Knight Foundation, overseeing technology products and strategy. Marc brings more than two decades of experience as a software developer and technology executive in the journalism industry to this role.
Prior to joining Knight, Marc worked at The New York Times for over a decade, where he led cross-functional teams of developers, designers and product strategists in the newsroom and on the business side. In 2016, Marc launched a new research and development unit focused on applying emerging technologies like machine learning and 5G in the service of journalism.
Previously, he was a software developer and technology architect at various news organizations, including NPR, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe and National Journal.
JACOB OHARA
Social Video Producer, Wall Street Journal
When News Goes Vertical — Insights from TikTok and Beyond
Jacob Ohara is a social video producer for The Wall Street Journal in New York. His work focuses on expanding multimedia storytelling on digital platforms.
Jacob is a graduate of Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. Before becoming a visuals producer, Jacob was a video intern at the Journal. He also produced multimedia stories as an intern for CalMatters, Forbes and the Texas Tribune.
His work has been recognized by the Society of Professional Journalists and National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, among others.
RYAN RESTIVO
YESEO
What I’ve Learned from 60,000+ Headlines
Ryan Restivo was a 2022-23 Reynolds Journalism Institute fellow who created the YESEO app, a free Slack app that has been installed in over 600 workspaces and helps journalists with SEO best practices. YESEO was a finalist for the 2024 Online Journalism Awards category Excellence in AI Innovation. YESEO recently partnered with The Oglethorpe Echo in the JournalismAI Innovation Challenge, supported by the Google News Initiative. YESEO’s goal is to reduce the time it takes to come up with that relevant headline, the right keywords and get your work seen and read. Ryan has over 15 years of experience in digital media.
ELITE TRUONG
Product Lead, Documented NY
Rethinking Revenue, Audience and Editorial Strategies for Local Communities
@elitetruong
Elite (e-light) Truong, product lead for Documented, a local newsroom serving immigrants in NYC and former R&D and advertising-editorial liaison director at The Washington Post, will spotlight strategies and experiments from research and local newsrooms to address how we can think about what helps us move our newsrooms (and industry) forward or backward in our economic landscape.
ZACH WADE
CNN
How To Drive Audience Growth: From Research To Execution
Zach Wade is Senior Director of Editorial Product and Performance – a team created to ensure CNN produces content that reaches audiences, and CNN builds experiences that engages them. He drives a company culture that uses evidence-based insights to serve audience needs. He has built a coalition of company leaders to adopt new content tactics so that CNN can engage its changing digital audience.
Wade contributes extensive knowledge of audience and user behavior to guide development of experiences in CNN Digital Products & Services such as subscriber content, AI, machine learning, personalization, video, and real-time storytelling.
Wade’s educational background is in Politics, Economics and Journalism from the University of Missouri.
JASON WEBB
Assistant Professor of Visual Communications, S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, Syracuse University
There Is No Spoon: Rethinking Presence and Perception in XR Storytelling
Dr. Jason Webb is an Assistant Professor for the Visual Communications Department in the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. He teaches classes in Motion Design, Character Animation, 2D and 3D Animation, and Immersive Media (XR Design). Webb’s research focuses on XR in Education to create educational content that is challenging and exciting for students to learn from. His work looks to push the boundaries of technology in storytelling.