Advisory Board

Ritu Kapur is the co-founder and managing director of Quint Digital Limited, which operates The Quint, a leading independent news platform in India. Under her leadership, The Quint has championed free speech through innovative initiatives like the citizen journalism platform “My Report” and the fact-checking project “WebQoof.” The organization has earned several accolades, including the Best News Website award for two consecutive years at the WAN-IFRA South Asian Digital Media Awards. Ritu brings over two decades of experience in broadcast journalism as one of the founding members of Network 18. During her tenure, she served as Features Editor at CNN-IBN and spearheaded programming for History TV18 before transitioning to establish The Quint. In addition to her work in media, Ritu serves on the advisory boards of Oxford University’s Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism and the World Editors Forum at WAN-IFRA.

Aws Al-Saadi, founder and president of Tech4Peace, leverages his computer engineering background and expertise in fact-checking, digital rights, and digital security. His skills were enriched by attending a summer school in human rights and media at Utrecht University, and a diploma in public policy and leadership. After working in IT and management, Aws dedicated himself to social impact through volunteering and organizational roles. He launched Tech4Peace in 2016 to combat disinformation, transforming it into a significant Iraqi NGO focused on digital security and mis- and disinformation. At Tech4Peace, he is a key project manager, fostering growth, partnerships, and educational initiatives.

Olivia Sohr has worked at Chequeado, a fact checking organization based in Argentina, since its foundation in 2010, where she is currently the Director of Impact and New Initiatives. She coordinates different journalistic projects within the organization, among them LatamChequea, the network of Latin American fact checkers that brings together 40 organizations from 18 countries. She also works in the evaluation of impact of fact checking and academic research to better understand the dynamics of disinformation. She is a sociologist and journalist. She holds a Master's degree in Sociology, specializing in Media from the École d'Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS). Besides her work in fact checking she has been a columnist in radio and television.

Daniel Bramatti is the editor of Estadão Verifica, the fact-checking team of O Estado de S.Paulo newspaper. In 2018, as president of Abraji, the Brazilian Association of Investigative Journalism, he helped First Draft to create Comprova, the largest collaborative project in the history of the Brazilian press, in which 24 media organizations worked together to inform voters about misleading content related to the presidential campaign. In 2012, he was a founding member of Estadão Dados, the first data journalism team in Brazil. In 2016, as a specialist in the use of data to cover Politics, public policies and civic issues, he participated in the Panama Papers global and collaborative investigation.

Masato Kajimoto, PhD, is a professor of practice at the Journalism and Media Studies Centre at the University of Hong Kong. He specializes in news literacy education, fact-checking practice, and misinformation ecosystem research in Asia. He founded a not-for-profit educational organization called ANNIE (Asian Network of News and Information Educators) to develop teaching and learning materials specific to the socio-cultural environments, media systems, and political landscapes in different Asian countries. At the university, Masato runs Annie Lab, a student-driven fact-checking newsroom on campus that became a verified signatory of IFCN's Code of Principles in 2021. Annie Lab is also a member of Vaccine Safety Net by the World Health Organization and is involved in interdisciplinary projects related to infodemic management. He holds a master's degree in journalism from the University of Missouri-Columbia and a PhD in sociology from the University of Hong Kong. He is fluent in English and Japanese. His writings appeared in scholarly journals and professional publications in both languages.

Thanos Sitistas is a fact-checker with a diverse background in fact-checking initiatives. He currently serves as a Research Associate at the Social Computing Research Center at Cyprus University of Technology (SCRC/CUT). Additionally, he is the founder of Greece Fact Check, a civil non-profit organization established in 2023. He is involved as a Consultant at Fact-Check Cyprus, the first officially recognized fact-checking initiative in Cyprus. Previously, he held a core position at Ellinika Hoaxes fact-checking organization, from 2015 to 2023 and co-founded Ellinika Hoaxes civil non-profit company in 2018 (left in 2023). He was an NCO at the Hellenic Air Force for 23 years, retiring in 2022.

Lori Robertson is the director of FactCheck.org, a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania. Before joining FactCheck.org in 2007, she covered the media for nine years as an editor and writer for American Journalism Review, a bimonthly media watchdog magazine. Previously, she was the administrative director of the Casey Journalism Center on Children and Families, a resource center for journalists covering at-risk kids. Her journalism honors include two awards from the Society of Professional Journalists for her work at FactCheck.org and the Bart Richards Award for Media Criticism for her work at AJR.

Wahyu Dhyatmika is the CEO of Tempo Digital, the digital arm of Tempo Media Group, one of Indonesia’s leading independent news organisations, known for its investigative journalism. He is also Chairperson of the Association of Indonesian Cyber Media (AMSI), where he works on press freedom, media sustainability, digital transformation, and the future of journalism in Indonesia. Previously, Wahyu served as Editor-in-Chief of Tempo Magazine and has held various editorial leadership roles within Tempo. His work has focused on investigative reporting, digital journalism, audience engagement, and building sustainable business models for independent media. He is actively involved in initiatives addressing the impact of artificial intelligence and digital platforms on journalism, including issues of information integrity, publisher rights, and new revenue models for news organisations. Wahyu was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University in 2014–2015.

Xhemajl Avdyli is Program and Development Manager at ADS/Hibrid.info, a Kosovo-based organisation working on fact-checking, media and information literacy, research, and information integrity. Hibrid.info is a verified signatory of the IFCN Code of Principles and a member of the European Fact-Checking Standards Network (EFCSN). Avdyli leads program development, international cooperation, partnerships, and institutional relations, working closely with regional and international fact-checking and information-integrity networks. His work includes initiatives addressing disinformation, media and AI literacy, digital rights, foreign information manipulation, and emerging challenges in the information environment. Before joining Hibrid.info in 2023, he spent around 18 years working across journalism, media, public communication, public institutions, management, and culture. His current work combines organisational development, research, international cooperation, and network-building, with a particular focus on strengthening collaboration within the fact-checking and wider information-integrity community.

Maarten Schenk is the co-founder and COO/CTO of Lead Stories. He won the 2020 "De Zesde Vijs" award from Skepp.be, a foundation in Belgium that promotes critical thinking and fights against pseudoscience. In 2022, he published a book called "De Fake News Files" (in Dutch) about his experiences co-founding and running a fact checking website that grew from two reporters to over seventy people working in a dozen countries.

Rabiu Alhassan is a media and digital strategy expert with about 2 decades of experience working across media channels and is currently invested in designing products at the intersection of technology and journalism, with a focus on information disorder. As the Executive Director of FactSpace West Africa, he leads initiatives that promote information integrity across the region, leveraging technology, media partnerships, and digital literacy programmes. Rabiu has collaborated with organizations such as WHO, UNESCO, USAID, UNICEF, Meedan, ECOWAS, Africa Check, Google News Initiative, DW Akademie, and IFCN, among other INGOs to strengthen information resilience. Passionate about media innovation and civic engagement, he is committed to promoting a digital age that fosters trust, ensuring access to credible information, empowering vulnerable members of the public, and promoting transparency in public discourse across West Africa.

Co-Founder and Managing Partner, Beam Reports (Sudan) Raghdan co-founded Beam Reports, Sudan's only IFCN-verified fact-checking organisation, and has led it through a war in which information warfare has been waged as ruthlessly as any fight on the ground. As Sudan became one of the world's largest humanitarian crises and one of its least-covered information environments, she kept Beam verifying claims, exposing propaganda and tracking the militarisation of information, even as much of her team was displaced. She then grew it into a regional organisation. Her career spans 15 years at the intersection of tech and society across Africa and MENA. She led election integrity work at Meta, managed Internews' MENA and global technology programmes, directed advocacy for Save the Children in Sudan, and shaped Luminate's Africa strategy on big tech accountability. She is now a Nonresident Fellow at TIMEP, working on information warfare and platform accountability. On the IFCN board, Raghdan brings the voice of fact-checkers working under fire, in places the world too often overlooks.

Joaquín Ortega is the Director of Content at the tech and journalism firm Newtral, and former deputy director of El Objetivo (laSexta), where his team became Spain's first IFCN fact-checking signatory. Over his 20-year career, he has collaborated with Condé Nast, managed national and European institutional communications, and championed media literacy by co-directing the Fact-Checking Master's program at CEU San Pablo University.

EunRyung Chong, PhD, is a professor at Semyung University's Graduate School of Journalism. She was the inaugural director of the SNU FactCheck Center, South Korea's first and largest platform for professional fact-checkers. After moving to Semyung, she founded the fact-checking desk at Danbi News, a nonprofit independent news outlet published by the graduate school, and Danbi FactCheck became an IFCN signatory in July 2026. Her research focuses on fact-checking, disinformation, and journalism practice. She previously spent 19 years as a reporter and editor at the Dong-A Ilbo, serving as deputy editor in the Society and Culture sections.

Television & print financial journalist for over 25 years now focussed on fact checking and fake news busting, the first in India. Also founded India's first data journalism initiative, the award-winning IndiaSpend, also a member of the Global Investigative Journalism Network (GIJN). A Fellow of the Aspen Institute, Colorado.

Neil Brown is the president of The Poynter Institute. He joined Poynter in September 2017, after serving as the editor and vice president of the Tampa Bay Times. He was named editor of the Times (formerly the St. Petersburg Times) in May 2010, and in that capacity oversaw the journalism published in the Times, on its website tampabay.com, and in related products including a daily tabloid called tbt*. During Brown's tenure leading the Times news staff, the paper won more national and state awards than at any time in its history, including six Pulitzer Prizes in the last eight years. He also launched PolitiFact.com, the fact-checking website that has been replicated nationally and inspired similar efforts worldwide.

Glenn Kessler has been editor and chief writer of The Fact Checker since 2011, making him one of the pioneers of political fact-checking. In a journalism career spanning nearly four decades, Kessler has covered foreign policy, economic policy, the White House, Congress, politics, airline safety and Wall Street. He was The Washington Post's chief State Department reporter for nine years, traveling around the world with three secretaries of state. Before that, he covered tax and budget policy for The Washington Post and also served as the newspaper's national business editor. He joined the Post in 1998 from Newsday, where he was part of two reporting teams that won Pulitzer Prizes in spot reporting. He is the author of “The Confidante: Condoleezza Rice and the Creation of the Bush Legacy” (2007) and “Donald Trump and His Assault on Truth: The President's Falsehoods, Misleading Claims and Flat-Out Lies” (2020). He earned a B.A. in history from Brown University (1981) and a Master of International Affairs from Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs (1983).