Introducing the people behind MDIF

Adriaan Stoop is a Bergh, Stoop & Sanders attorney based in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. In addition to his work as an attorney, Adriaan worked in the field of democratisation for various international organizations, including the OSCE and the EU. He was the chair of the electoral court in Kosovo in 2001 for the first parliamentary elections after the war, and from then on worked in several countries in Eastern Europe and Africa. Adriaan holds several board positions; he is, amongst others, Chairman of the Supervisory Board of NRC Media and Board Member of the European Press Prize.

Patrícia Campos Mello is Editor-at-Large and Columnist at Brazil’s Folha de São Paulo newspaper. She has more than 25 years’ experience covering international relations, technology and human rights, and has reported from more than 50 countries.

Patricia was awarded the Columbia University Maria Moors Cabot award, the International Press Freedom Award of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). She has also won the Vladimir Herzog Special Award for Democracy and Justice, the Gabriel Garcia Marquez Excellence Award, the International Committee of the Red Cross Prize for humanitarian journalism and the King of Spain Journalism Prize. Patricia was awarded the Ordre National du Mérite in 2021 and the Ordem of Rio Branco in 2023.

Patricia has covered influence operations and tech regulation in Brazil, India and the US since 2014. Her investigative reporting led to changes in electoral law in Brazil. She is also the author of the bestselling book “A máquina do ódio ” (Companhia das Letras) about authoritarianism, disinformation and freedom of the press. 

Patricia was the Washington correspondent for the Estado de S. Paulo newspaper between 2006 and 2010. She covered the economic crisis in the USA, and the elections in 2008, 2012, 2016, 2020 and 2024. She also covered the 9/11 attacks in New York in 2001 and the war in Afghanistan in 2009. Patricia was the only Brazilian reporter to cover the Ebola epidemic in Sierra Leone in 2014 and 2015, and covered the Covid pandemic in Brazil, reporting from public hospitals and shelters for homeless people.

More recently she spent time in Ukraine, Syria, Iraq, Libya, Turkey, Lebanon and Kenya reporting on conflict and refugees. In 2024, she covered the Israeli attacks against Lebanon and the fall of Assad in Syria. In 2025, she reported on the war in Ukraine from three frontlines in the east of the country.

Patricia was an associate researcher at Columbia University in 2021/2022, working on a project about internet regulation and electoral disinformation. She is the author of “Lua de Mel em Kobane”, a book about Syrian refugees who resisted the Islamic State siege in Kobane.

Patrícia has a degree in journalism from the University of São Paulo (USP) and a Master’s from New York University.

Dao is Senior Vice President and Head of Digital Advertising Products at The New York Times. Prior to The Times, Dao served as CPTO / Publisher of BuzzFeed, a reinvention of the traditional title in which she led the company’s product, tech and data teams. During her 11-year stint at BuzzFeed, she also spent time running the growth, editorial, video, food, social, branded content, ad product and distribution, and news teams. She previously served as Chief Executive Officer of LeMonde.fr in Paris, and also worked at Dow Jones Ventures, Concrete Media, and Andersen Consulting (now Accenture). Dao holds an Applied Math / Computer Science undergraduate degree from Harvard University. 

Kerstin Mogull is a former Managing Director of Tate (encompassing Tate Modern, Tate Britain, Tate Liverpool and Tate St. Ives). For six years, she was responsible for running the overall business, managing more than 1,000 staff and leading a range of capital projects, including the award-winning £260m extension to Tate Modern. From 2000 to 2012, she held senior roles at the BBC across policy, strategy, digital and operations, including Chief Operating Officer of BBC Future Media & Technology. Earlier, as BBC Director of Strategy, Kerstin led the planning for iPlayer, the BBC’s ground-breaking on-demand streaming service. Earlier in her career, Kerstin worked in strategy and digital in the airline industry.

Kerstin is currently a board member of ColArt Ltd (Lindengruppen) and a Council Member of the Swedish Chamber of Commerce. She recently stepped down from the Board of Swedish media group Bonnier AB.

Kerstin holds degrees from the Stockholm School of Economics, L’Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales (Paris) and Kellogg, Northwestern University (Chicago), where she was a Fulbright scholar.

Kerstin competes for Team GB in triathlon and is a European and World medalist in her age group.

Photo credit: Tate Photography – Tate Galleries, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=65407803

Catherine Gicheru is the founder and director of the Africa Women Journalism Project (AWJP) and an International Center for Journalists (ICFJ) Knight Fellow. The AWJP drives coverage of underreported gender, health and development issues affecting marginalised groups and works to strengthen the voices of women journalists by helping them to become innovators in their newsrooms. Catherine leads a team of journalists, mentors and data analysts in five African countries (Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania and Uganda) who are producing smart, data-based storytelling with a special focus on COVID-19.

Catherine was the first woman bureau chief and first female news editor of the Nation Media Group and was the founding editor of The Star daily. She co-founded East Africa’s first budget and public finance fact-checking and verification initiative, PesaCheck. She is an advisory board member of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism Oxford, the Aga Khan University’s Graduate School of Media and Communications and the British Council’s First News Worldwide program. She is also a member of the International Women’s Media Foundation (IWMF) Online Harassment Advisory Board. Catherine advised on the Open Society Foundations’ Fiscal Governance Program and the ICFJ’s State of Technology in Global Newsrooms survey. She is a jury member for the WAN-IFRA Africa Digital Media Awards and European Journalism Centre’s MoneyTrail, among others.

Catherine is a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University, a Reuters Institute Journalism Fellow at Oxford University and a 1992 IWMF Courage in Journalism award winner.

Marc Da Costa is the Co-Founder and Chairman of Enigma, a data technology company helping to expand access to credit for small businesses. He holds a Ph.D. in cultural anthropology from the University of California and his writing about technology and culture has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian and elsewhere. Marc is also a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations and has held fellowships at the National Science Foundation, Intel Labs, the Robert Bosch Stiftung and the Columbia Journalism School.

Sheila Coronel is a Professor at the Graduate School of Journalism, Columbia University,Toni Stabile Professor of Professional Practice in Investigative Journalism, and Director of the Toni Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism. She began her reporting career at the Philippine Panorama, reporting on human rights and politics, before joining the staff of the Manila Times as a political reporter. In 1989, Sheila co-founded the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism, which trains journalists in investigative skills and has provided an environment for in-depth, groundbreaking reporting on issues such as the military, poverty and corruption. Sheila has also reported on Philippine politics for The New York Times and The Guardian, and has authored more than a dozen books. She has received numerous awards, including the 2003 Magsaysay Award for Journalism, Literature and the Creative Communication Arts.