Bonnie Abaunza

Bonnie Abaunza is Vice President, Campaign Development & Operations for Participant Media, where she is responsible for the creation and implementation of advocacy campaigns around Participant‘s films and media products. Prior to joining Participant, Bonnie served for six years as Director of the Artists for Amnesty program for the United States headquarters of Amnesty International, cultivating relationships with celebrity spokespeople interested in leveraging their visibility to support critical human rights and social justice issues and raising Amnesty International’s visibility, enhance organizational diversity and attract a new generation of activists through the power of popular media. During her time as Director, Artists for Amnesty has produced four film festivals, four Academy Awards viewing parties to benefit Amnesty, quarterly entertainment industry salons, more than 50 high-profile feature and documentary screening events, and numerous fundraisers, art showings, and educational and promotional events. Bonnie currently serves as Board Chair, Artists for Amnesty and on the Board of Casa Libre/Freedom House operated by the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law.

Jimmie Briggs - Chairman

Jimmy Briggs is an award winning journalist, author and human rights lecturer. He is the author of « Innocents Lost: When Child Soldiers Go To War », and of the upcoming « The Wars Women Fight: Dispatches from a Father To His Daughter ». Jimmie was a Special consultant for the United Nations Special Session on Children, 2002, and has worked with Amnesty International and the International Rescue Committee among others. A media partner of WITNESS, and a consultant to various NGOs and media productions, Jimmie also lectures at high schools and universities throughout the United States, and Europe. Recently appointed a George A. Miller Visiting Professor at the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana, he is executive director of Men Call An End, a global advocacy campaign that uses sport and music to enlist men and youth in the struggle to end violence against women.

Lydia Cacho

Lydia Cacho is a Mexican journalist and advocate for children and women’s rights. She is the author of Los demonios del edén: el poder detrás de la pornografía infantil (Demons of eden: the powers behind child pornography), a 2005 investigative report that denounced the involvement of several Mexican businessmen and politicians in a ring of child pornography and prostitution. Following publication, she was pressured, threatened and illegally arrested, until at the end of 2007 the United Nations Human Rights Council eventually advised her to leave the country and offered her political asylum, legal assistance, and access to international courts. While being held, Cacho was granted the Premio Francisco Ojeda al Valor Periodístico (Francisco Ojeda Award for Journalistic Courage). She also received the 2007 Amnesty International Ginetta Sagan Award for Women and Children's Rights and, in 2008, the UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize. Recently, Cacho has taken the cause of the unsolved murders in Ciudad Juárez as a call to action against impunity of abuse of women in Mexico. She is also the director of a shelter for battered women and children.

Katy Cronin

Katy Cronin is a former radio and TV journalist with ABC Australia, covering domestic politics and national stories for more than ten years. In 1996, she went to Brussels as ABC’s Europe correspondent. She covered the Kosovo war in 1999, receiving a Walkley Award, Australia’s major national journalism prize, for her news reporting. Katy joined the International Crisis Group as Director of Media and Information in 2001, leaving in 2004 to further her studies (MA Contemporary War and Peace Studies, University of Sussex). She worked with Crisis Action in 2005 as Policy Officer and Campaigner, and then joined DATA as Media Manager in 2006. In September 2006 Katy joined the Elders as its communications director.

Mariane Pearl

Mariane Pearl is a French free-lance journalist. She is the widow of Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter who was kidnapped and murdered by terrorists in Pakistan in early 2002. The Pearls were both foreign correspondents; they lived and worked in Bombay, India, before going to Karachi, Pakistan, to cover aspects of the war on terrorism.

Her memoir, A Mighty Heart, which deals with the events surrounding her husband's kidnapping and assassination, was adapted for the film of the same title with Angelina Joli as Mariane, co-produced by Brad Pitt, Andrew Eaton and Dede Gardner and directed by Michael Winterbottom.

Marcia Poole

Marcia Poole is part of the senior management team of Amnesty's International Secretariat, based in London. She is the Senior Director for Communications and Information. Before joining Amnesty International, Marcia worked for five years with the United Nations, with the peacekeeping missions in Timor-Leste and Kosovo and at the UN System Staff College in Turin, Italy. Prior to that, she worked for 17 years for the BBC, starting out as a broadcast journalist. She headed the World Service’s Burmese and Brazilian sections, as well as its training department. Marcia was born in Brazil where she worked for Reuters before moving to the UK in the early 1980’s.

Aidan White

Aidan White is the General Secretary of the International Federation of Journalists, the world's largest organisation of journalists, representing around 600.000 members in more than 100 countries. Aidan is Irish by birth and a journalist by trade. He worked for 19 years on newspapers in the United Kingdom, including 7 years at The Guardian, before joining the IFJ in 1987. He is a long-time campaigner for journalists' rights.

Manana Aslamazyan - Advisor, Intl Jury; Organiser, Media Awards

Manana Aslamazyan, a media and television expert who has worked with Russian journalists for more than 15 years, is Executive Director of Internews Europe. Aslamazyan and Alexei K. Simonov launched Russia’s first freedom of speech organization in 1991, the Glasnost Defense Foundation (GDF). In 1992, Aslamazyan began to work with Internews Network to organize events for newly formed independent TV stations around the former Soviet Union.In 2006, in response to changing legislation and its increased focus on training, Internews Russia re-organized as the Educated Media Foundation (EMF). Aslamazyan has served as an expert to the Russian Duma Committee on Information Policy, and from 2000 to 2004, she was one of three representatives of civil society on the influential Federal Competition Commission of Ministry of Press, TV Broadcasting and Mass Media. She is a board member of the prestigious Academy of Russian Television and served for three years as a Vice-President of the National Association of TV and Radio Broadcasters (NAT). Aslamazyan serves on the boards of several Russian non-profit organizations, Internews Network, and Internews International, which unites local Internews organizations around the world. She is currently Executive Director of Internews Europe.