After completing a Graduate Diploma of Journalism from Massey University Kirsty’s journalism career started at a regional paper in Taranaki in 2008, before moving through online and Sundays reporting.

Kirsty won a national Best Investigation award in 2014 for a series of stories about the treatment of intellectually disabled people in care homes.

Quoting The Spinoff: “This media era is characterised as one of disastrous clickbait and diminishing journalistic standards. But Kirsty Johnston and the Herald’s new project Under the Bridge shows that passionate, paradigm-shifting investigative journalism is alive and well in New Zealand.”

Chris Keall has been with the NBR since 2009. He was previously Fairfax Business Media publications editorial director, responsible for CIO, Computerworld, PC World, >>FFWD and Reseller News, and is former editor of PC World and Internet Magazine.

His multiple awards include two Qantas Media Awards for feature writing and the Magazine Publishers’ Associations award for Business Magazine Editor of the Year.

Kym Niblock has 25+ years of media and 10 years of IPTV and OTT digital experience with with brands like Spark, Foxtel, BBC.com, Viacom, B Sky B, Nickelodeon and MTV Networks. She was most recently the CEO of Media at Spark where she set up and ran Lightbox.

Kym specialises in taking disruptive content initiatives to market and building them into large scale and sometimes global businesses, that are leading the way carving out new business, value and revenue models at the forefront of the media revolution.

Russell Brown is a well-known New Zealand media commentator, and the owner of the Public Address community of blogs started in 2002.

In 1986, he moved to England where he wrote for various publications, before returning to New Zealand in 1991. Since 2008 to he has presented the media commentary programme known as Media7, Media3 and now Media Take on Maori Television.

Where Troy Rawhiti-Forbes goes, change follows. He is an experienced digital journalist and business communicator whose career has taken him from the New Zealand Herald to Spark, and now to Newsroom – an independent New Zealand startup dedicated to quality online journalism.

Troy has a standing reputation for using social media in inimitable left-field style, setting agendas with New Zealanders always squarely in the focus.

Among various creative and entrepreneurial endeavours, Julian is a devoted organiser of these events and deeply engaged citizen of the world.

After founding communico, providing all-media design, photography, video, and event production Julian launched into the startup world developing the controlroom.co tool for online marketing.

Intense curiosity and hunger for learning means he will always ask that burning question, a trait that isn’t always endearing but should ensure a lively panel discussion!

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What goes around comes around.

The world drinks 1.9 billion coke drinks every day but the people behind the name ingredient have never earned a cent. So Karma Cola decided to do something about that. Every time someone buys a bottle of Karma Cola proceeds go back to the people who grow cola in Boma village, Sierra Leone.