Trainers and panelists – Page 10

Savica Pureber

Savica Pureber works as a supreme state prosecutor in the office of the state prosecutor general of the Republic of Slovenia.

For a number of years, her special attention has been dedicated to crimes against human rights, in particularly to human trafficking, enslavement and exploitation through prostitution. She also coordinates the work of district attorneys in this field. Since 2003, she has been a member of an interdisciplinary working group established by the Slovenian government to fight against human trafficking.

Helena Bengtsson

Helena Bengtsson is database editor for the News and Current Affairs Department at Sveriges Television, the national broadcasting company in Sweden.

Since 1994, she has served as a researcher, assistant producer and projects editor with the company. During 2006-07, she was a database editor at the Center for Public Integrity in Washington DC, USA.

In 2010 she and two colleagues won the Great Journalism Award, Innovator of the Year for Valpejl – a interactive database on the web containing 54 000 candidates for the Swedish election.

Twitter: HelenaBengtsson
Company website: www.svt.se/nyheter

James B. Mintz

Adjunct Professor at Toni Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism.

Jim Mintz has been an adjunct professor of the Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism at the Columbia Journalism School for the past three years. Jim is president of the Mintz Group, a research and investigative firm, and has spent 30 years conducting investigations worldwide. He helped pioneer the use of sophisticated resources by law firms in the 1970s as an in-house investigator at a Washington, D.C. law firm.

In 1980, Newsweek said of their unique in-house group: “What sets [them] apart – and a few others around the nation – is their ability to take comprehensive looks at complicated situations and make sense out of them.” His articles include “Harassment 101: How to Handle Complaints” for the Wall Street Journal, “Strategies for Managing Complex Corporate Investigations” for the Practicing Law Institute and “Background Checking on Board Candidates” for Directors & Boards.

Two of Jim’s notable recent assignments:

He was chief investigator for the Connecticut legislative committee that considered the impeachment of Governor John Rowland. Jim testified for days at televised hearings, during one of which Rowland resigned.
Jim also worked on behalf of New York City on the issue of how handguns are distributed, sold and get into the hands of criminals.

Dragana Nikolic Solomon

Dragana Nikolic Solomon is the Head of the Media Department (2007 – present) at the OSCE Mission to Serbia where she serves as senior adviser to the Head of Mission on media issues, communicates OSCE media policy to Serbian Government, media and NGOs, as well as briefing the international community on the media environment

She also advises on the drafting of the new media legislation and provides expert counsel to legislators, the international community and governmental agencies regarding current legislation and its compliance with international standards.

Ms. Nikolic develops and manages projects, including capacity building for Serbian journalists to increase the quality of reporting, with special emphasis on South and South West Serbia.

Her extensive background includes being Serbia editor and director for the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network BIRN, as well as Balkans assistant editor for the Institute of War and Peace Reporting.

http://www.osce.org/serbia/

Marija Ristic

Marija Ristic is an investigative journalist, with a decade-long experience in war crimes reporting, open-source research and emerging technologies.

She is currently a manager at Amnesty International Crisis Evidence Lab, running Digital Verification Corps – a network that supports Amnesty International teams in human rights documentation and fact-finding. Evidence Lab brings together investigators, engineers, developers and others to pilot new and expanding tools such as artificial intelligence, remote sensing, weapons identification and big-data analytics. Before joining Amnesty, Marija was an executive director of Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, leading media non-profit in Southeast and Central Europe. For her work as a journalist, she received numerous awards, including the Reporters Without Borders Annual Press Freedom award. She graduated from Geneva Academy for International Humanitarian Law, as previously held fellowship positions at Columbia University New York and Free University Berlin.

Laura Ranca

Laura Ranca works with the RISE Project (www.riseproject.ro), a community of investigative journalists, programmers, graphic artists and activists from Romania who investigate cross-border corruption and organized crime, and develop advanced data research and visualization tools.

Laura coordinates the development of Visual Investigative Scenarios, a data visualization platform designed to assist investigative journalists, activists and others in mapping complex business or crime networks (www.vis.occrp.org).

Her current work also includes training journalists and activists on data visualization and a research project on media ownership in Moldova.

Previously, Laura has worked as a public communications officer with the United Nations peacekeeping mission in Democratic Republic of the Congo and as a researcher with the Center for Media and Communications Studies at the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary.

Gordana Igric

Gordana Igric is BIRN’s Regional Director. She began her career as a journalist in Belgrade in 1981.

Gordana reported from Bosnia and Kosovo during the wars that followed the dissolution of former Yugoslavia and returned there to research and document war crimes.

She has received several journalism awards such as the 1998 Overseas Press Club (USA) Award for Human Rights Reporting and a Human Rights Watch, HRW, award in the same year for her research into war crimes in Foca, Bosnia & Herzegovina.

She was Balkan project manager at the Institute of War and Peace Reporting, IWPR, from 1999 until August 2005 during which time IWPR’s Balkan reporting received numerous press awards and media citations.

She is the founder of the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, BIRN, and currently serves as the Regional Network Director.

Miranda Patrucic

Miranda Patrucic is a leading investigative reporter and regional editor with the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, and the lead investigator with Investigative Dashboard.

She is also an international speaker who has trained investigative reporters, anti-corruption groups and police in dozens of countries around the world. She was the lead reporter on projects exposing alliances between government, business and organized crime in Montenegro as well as crime and corruption involving the First Bank of Montenegro that uncovered the massive misuse of public funds. She was part of a team that reported on how the Bosnian government bought an apartment for the prime minister, which led to his indictment and resignation in 2009. She was the lead reporter on a joint project with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) on tobacco smuggling in Montenegro that uncovered many of that country’s prime minister’s hidden assets. She also worked on ICIJ’s project Looting the Seas, uncovering a $4 billion black market in endangered bluefin tuna. Both projects won IRE’s Tom Renner award for crime reporting. She also worked on OCCRP’s Offshore Crime, Inc. series that won the Daniel Pearl Award. As a specialist in tracking people and companies, Patrucic has worked with reporters from the Middle East, Europe, US, Canada, Latin America and Australia.

Gavin Rees

Gavin Rees is the director of Dart Centre Europe, a not-for-profit media organisation that is dedicated to supporting informed, innovative and ethical news reporting on violence, conflict and tragedy

The Centre operates as part of a global, interdisciplinary network of news professionals, mental health experts, educators and researchers who work in such areas as crime, family violence, natural disaster, war and human rights.

Over the last 15 years Gavin has worked in a variety of broadcast media, producing business and political news for international networks, as well as working on drama and documentary films for the BBC, Channel 4 and other broadcasters.

During this work Gavin has developed a specialist interest in understanding and teaching the dynamics of interview situations and, in particular, how journalists might best approach vulnerable people who have been affected by traumatic violence or structural poverty.

Gavin is a former Research Fellow at Bournemouth Media School and was a leading member of the production team for the BBC documentary drama, Hiroshima, which won an international Emmy in 2006.

http://dartcenter.org/staff#bio-849 or http://dartcenter.org/

Marija Andjelkovic

Marija Andjelkovic LL.M. is an anti-traffickingexpert, human rights activist and one of the founders and current president of ASTRA, the first organisation to address the human trafficking issue in Serbia.

Andjelkovic began her career as an activist as project manager atthe NGO SOS Hotline and Centre for Girls in 1998. While working at the Centrewith girls who fell victim to various forms of violence, Andjelkovic was one ofsix women who recognised the presence of human trafficking in Serbia. From theearly 2000s she devoted her career to the development of victim supportmechanisms and appropriate responses to the crime of trafficking on the statelevel.

Over the past 15 years,Andjelkovic has been a trainer at more than 200 workshops, training sessionsand seminars in Serbia and abroad, sharing her anti-trafficking expertise withprofessionals from institutions, professors, social workers, journalists, policeofficers, the UN Peace Corps, judges, prosecutors, NGO representatives andstudents. She also took part in defining the working methodology for the SOShotline for victims of trafficking, founding the Regional NGO ACTA (Anti CorruptionAnti Trafficking Action) and presenting alternative reports to UN committees (2001-date).

As the president of ASTRA, she hasled eight large-scale media campaigns and produced a manual for journalistscreated as a tool for responsible and reliable reporting on trafficking inhuman beings.

She is the author of numerousarticle, manuals and handbooks on the trafficking issue.