Category: Trainers and panelists

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.

 

Dragana Babovic

Dragana Babovic is a journalist for the Montenegrin newspaper Vijesti.  Since 2003, she has covered stories about corruption, organized crime, conflict of interest and nepotism.

In 2009, Babovic won an award for her investigative reports on corruption given by the Media Institute as part of the campaign ‘Society without Corruption.’ She is also part of the investigative programme ‘Under the Scope’ that is conducted by Vijesti and the weekly Monitor, along with MANS.

Last year, Babovic participated in a project funded by USAID called Good Governance Activity in Montenegro.  She also conducted research on a series of investigative pieces pertaining to the efficiency of juridical work.

Babovic lives in Podgorica and is a lawyer by vocation.

Mark Schoofs

Mark Schoofs is a senior editor at ProPublica. Before coming to ProPublica in 2011, he had worked for more than 11 years at The Wall Street Journal, where he was a foreign correspondent and an investigative reporter for Page One.

Schoofs played a key role in investigations ranging from abuse and fraud in Medicare to the international methamphetamine trade. He contributed to the Journal’s coverage of the Sept. 11 attacks, which won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News. Prior to the Journal, Schoofs was a staff writer at The Village Voice, where he won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting for his eight-part series on AIDS in Africa. He has also written for The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post, Esquire, Out, and many other publications. He teaches journalism at Yale University and holds two U.S. patents.

Luigi Rinella

Luigi Rinella was born on February 13, 1968, and graduated in law from Bari (Apulia) University in 1991. He joined the Italian National Police in 1995 and worked in Milan as the chief of a section (100 people) of the ‘Volanti’ patrol unit. After that, he went on to direct the investigative section of the unit.

In 2000, after being transferred to central directorate for criminal police in Rome, he was appointed chief of the transnational crime Organisation section of the central operational service of the Italian National Police. In 2004, he was appointed chief of the narcotics section of the central service.

In September 2004, he was appointed liaison officer for the Italian National Police in Washington D.C. in the United States.

In February 2008, he was assigned to the Squadra Mobile (criminal investigative squad) of the Questura of Milan as deputy chief and chief of the narcotics section.

In October 2011, he was promoted and assigned to the Questura of Bari as chief of the Squadra Mobile.

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.

Randall Joyce

Randall Joyce has been a producer at CBS News for 25 years and has been working overseas since 1995

His work has ranged from hard news stories and war reporting for the CBS Evening News to longer investigative pieces for prime-time broadcasts such as 60 Minutes II and Public Eye.

He has won numerous awards for his work including the DuPont Silver Baton, an Emmy Award, an Overseas Press Club Award for Human rights reporting, a Sigma Delta Chi Award for Breaking News and three RTNDA Edward R. Murrow Awards.

He is currently based in Belgrade but travels extensively, with his most recent work largely focused on Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Sasa Mirkovic

Sasa Mirkovic is one of the founders of Radio B92, one of the first independent broadcasters in Serbia, which began production in 1989

Between 1989 and 2003 he worked as music editor, director of programmes and general manager of Radio Television B92.

He served as president of B92′ s board of directors and a member of the board from 2003  until 2007.

Since 2007 Mirkovic has been the president of Trust B92 Ltd. (the biggest shareholder in B92) and the broadcaster’s director for external communications.

Sasa Mirkovic was one of the founders of ANEM (the association of independent electronic media) in 1993.

Since 2006 he has been the president of ANEM.

Sasa Mirkovic graduated from the law faculty at the University of Belgrade. He was born in 1967.

Joachim Dyfvermark

Joachim Dyfvermark is award winning investigative reporter and producer for Sweden’s main investigative program “Uppdrag granskning” at SVT – Swedish Television.

Dyfvermark has been working in radio, TV and film since 1996, first as a news reporter and later as investigative reporter and host on “Kalla Fakta” TV4, before working for Swedish Television.