The AI Journalism Labs at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY, supported by Microsoft, is thrilled to announce the 2026 AI Journalism Lab: Builders cohort, offered in partnership with the Nordic AI Journalism (NAIJ) network, the leading international group for AI in journalism. This group of 24 journalists, technologists, product managers, designers and data practitioners from around the world will focus on the practical work of building, testing and implementing AI-powered tools inside newsrooms.
“We are so proud of this cohort and this unprecedented partnership with Nordic journalists who are far ahead of the curve. I expect we’ll see groundbreaking projects come out of this collaboration,” said Marie Gilot, Executive Director of J+ at the Newmark J-School.
The Builders program is designed for professionals actively working at the operational layer of news organizations, and participants will translate real newsroom and audience needs into concrete AI applications, from internal workflow tools to audience-facing products, with a strong emphasis on usability, sustainability and responsible deployment.
“I love the builder mindset: make something, test it, improve it, go back, build, test, improve. That’s what this lab is for – combining strong journalistic judgment with hands-on experimentation and product thinking, so AI becomes a capability newsrooms can trust,” said Sara Vardar, Nordic AI Journalism Co-Lead and Innovation Manager at JP/Politikens.
The cohort includes participants based in Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Finland, the Netherlands, Romania, Singapore, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States, with professional backgrounds spanning investigative reporting, data journalism, newsroom analytics, product development, editorial innovation and AI tooling.
The Builders Lab will run from January 29 to May 22, 2026. The program combines virtual sessions with an in-person kick-off at the Newmark J-School in New York on February 6–7, where participants will begin the project work that continues throughout the lab.
AI JOURNALISM LAB: BUILDERS COHORT
Annesha Bhattacharya
Pronouns: she/her
Current location: Brooklyn, New York, United States
Country of origin: United States
Organization: The New York Times
Role: Manager, Strategic Initiatives
Annesha Bhattacharya works in strategic initiatives at The New York Times, where she has focused on subscription growth and newsroom strategy. She currently leads newsroom AI initiatives for The Times’ sports brand, The Athletic, focused on operational improvements, user facing applications of AI, and enabling new ways of storytelling. Annesha has spent nearly a decade on the business side of journalism, spanning across B2B sales, commercial partnerships, audience insights, and GTM strategy, before a detour from news to earn an MBA from Dartmouth College and spend some time in management consulting. Originally from the Boston area (where her love of journalism began with a high school internship at her county newspaper), Annesha currently lives in Brooklyn, New York. In her free time she is an illustrator, runner, and soccer fan.
Bryan Davis
Pronouns: he/him
Current location: New York, New York, United States
Country of origin: United States
Organization: The Associated Press
Role: Director of Product
Bryan Davis is the Director of Product, Data & Analytics at The Associated Press, where he builds product and data strategy for APNews.com and AP’s mobile applications. He manages a team focused on growing audiences and building systems that increase revenue from advertising and reader donations. With over 15 years in digital media, Bryan has led product growth and audience teams at NBC News Digital, The Atlantic, and The New York Times. He specializes in bridging technical implementation and business strategy, leading cross-functional teams across editorial, engineering, and revenue. His expertise spans marketing technology platforms, customer data systems, and AI-powered personalization. He’s focused on sustainable growth strategies for mission-driven media organizations that balance editorial integrity with revenue targets. Outside of the office, Bryan spends his time reading, going on adventures around New York City with his family, and scouting new pizza spots.
Melle Drenthe
Pronouns: he/him
Current location: Amsterdam, Netherlands
Country of origin: Netherlands
Organization: Mediahuis NL
Role: Editorial Lead, Innovation
Melle Drenthe is a Dutch journalist, historian, and editorial innovation lead, working at the intersection of data, storytelling, and AI. He specializes in audience insights, subscription strategy, and the deployment of AI-driven tools that support reporters, editors, and product teams. Beyond his professional focus, he is an avid gamer, a drummer and lifelong reader who tries to make journalism more accessible, more experimental, and more future-focused — always with an eye on how technology can empower storytelling rather than replace it.
Annika Grosser
Pronouns: she/her
Current location: Oxford, United Kingdom
Country of origin: Germany
Organization: BBC News
Role: Journalist, BBC News AI
Annika Grosser is a journalist with the BBC News AI team, where she pilots AI solutions for editorial workflows, including AI-assisted alt text, AI for newsletters, and agentic AI for investigative and data journalism. She also works part time with the BBC England Data Unit, reporting local data-driven stories and leading on a data project investigating police misconduct across UK forces. Originally from Berlin, Annika holds a master’s degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. Before moving to the UK to join the BBC, she lived in New York, working as a wealth reporter on Forbes’ billionaires list, as a misinformation analyst at NewsGuard, and as data reporting lead on an investigative project with MuckRock and New York Focus revealing misconduct histories in the New York State Police.
Victor Ilie
Pronouns: he/him
Current location: Romania
Country of origin: Romania
Organization: Snoop
Role: Investigative Reporter
Victor Ilie is a Romanian investigative journalist and OSINT researcher whose work focuses on exposing corruption, organized crime, and systemic abuses, often through impactful undercover reporting. Victor has contributed to major Romanian independent media organizations like RISE Project, Recorder.ro, and Snoop.ro. His most recent works include an investigation into the smuggling and corruption surrounding the Ukrainian grain trade through Romania in 2023, which led to revelations that he was placed under surveillance by Romanian anti-corruption authorities, and ongoing investigations into mis-and-disinformation Russian networks.
Madison Karas
Pronouns: she/her
Current location: Bogotá, Colombia
Country of origin: United States
Organization: Independent
Role: Product Manager
Madison Karas leads product and research initiatives for independent media organizations. She has worked with startup newsrooms from small shops to large operations and is interested in building a better, more intentional future of news media for all involved. Madison is currently exploring how service design, cooperative models, and more robust contribution systems can benefit everyone involved in journalism, from producers to consumers. Prior to current projects, she’s worked with organizations like Tiny News Collective, 2PuntosPlatform, The Baltimore Banner, and Resolve Philadelphia. Madison is originally from Minnesota and currently based in Bogotá, Colombia, and has a special place for Philadelphia in her heart after studying journalism and economics at Temple University. She is excited to work on prototyping how AI can make news more actionable for audiences in the AI Builders Lab at CUNY.
Ryan Kim
Pronouns: he/him
Current location: New York, New York, United States
Country of origin: United States
Organization: The Texas Tribune
Role: Product Manager
Ryan Kim is a Product Manager at The Texas Tribune, where he shapes the products and systems that support one of the nation’s leading nonprofit newsrooms. Through the AI Journalism Lab, he will explore how AI-powered tools can help newsrooms deepen audience trust and support sustainable growth. Prior to the Tribune, Ryan led subscriber acquisition and retention for a global readership at Foreign Policy. With master’s and bachelor’s degrees in journalism from Northwestern University, he combines his reporting background with product strategy to bridge newsroom priorities and technical solutions.
Scott Klein
Pronouns: he/him
Current location: New York, New York, United States
Country of origin: United States
Organization: Newspack @ Automattic
Role: Publisher Advocate
Scott Klein is an award-winning journalist and product leader who builds data-driven tools to help people understand their world and participate in civic life. He is Publisher Advocate on Automattic’s Newspack team, where he helps a community of more than 325 publishers share best practices, experiment with AI, and connect their work to the Newspack platform. He also launched the Knight Election Hub, which connected hundreds of local newsrooms with data, software, and services to cover the 2024 election more effectively. He previously founded ProPublica’s news applications and data teams and co-founded DocumentCloud, a platform now used by thousands of newsrooms to organize, analyze and publish source documents. His work has helped define how journalism uses data, interactivity, and AI to make complex issues understandable at a personal level.
Mitchell Kotler
Pronouns: he/him
Current location: Hillsborough, NJ, United States
Country of origin: United States
Organization: MuckRock Foundation
Role: CTO
Mitchell Kotler is the CTO and co-founder at MuckRock, which is a non-profit which helps people file public records requests. MuckRock also runs DocumentCloud, which allows journalists to upload, collaborate and embed primary source materials. He has worked for a variety of technology companies before starting MuckRock. He currently lives in New Jersey with his wife and two kids. Besides technology, he enjoys cooking, lifting weights and board games.
Viktor Lagerborg
Pronouns: he/him
Current location: Umeå, Sweden
Country of origin: Sweden
Organization: Tidningar i Norr (VK Media)
Role: Digital Editor
Viktor Lagerborg is a journalist based in Umeå in northern Sweden, working as digital editor with four small and super-local newspapers, a role that includes everything from oversight and training to writing articles and various projects. As a lifelong science fiction fan, he was initially interested in Large Language Models and other real life applications of artificial intelligence mostly because of how cool it was, but quickly started realizing how to (and, perhaps more importantly, how not to) use it as a journalistic tool and eventually how to use it to create even more tools. Being part of some very small newsrooms, Viktor has mostly been using AI to help create more content (such as a tool to automatically create articles from police events or weather warnings and an AI-powered quiz-creator), but is hoping to learn more about also using it to create better content.
Chloe Lim
Pronouns: she/her
Current location: Singapore, Singapore
Country of origin: Singapore
Organization: The Business Times
Role: Journalist
Chloe Lim is a journalist with The Business Times in Singapore, reporting on Asia markets and AI developments in the region. She is a pioneer member of Thrive, an award-winning young audience platform educating young adults aged 18 to 28 on personal finance and working life topics via newsletters and social media. Her current research explores how media education and digital newsroom efficiency can be complemented by AI and up-and-coming tech products in Asia’s newsrooms. Chloe is a graduate of Yale-NUS College with a Bachelor of Arts (Hons.) in Global Affairs.
Kalle Pirhonen
Pronouns: he/him
Current location: Helsinki, Finland
Country of origin: Finland
Organization: Sanoma Media Finland, Ilta-Sanomat
Role: AI Producer
Kalle Pirhonen has 20+ years experience in commercial and public service media in different positions. In April 2025 he started as an AI producer (new role, 1 of 2 at IS – together with other AI professionals around joint SMF/HS-IS-Lab) at Ilta-Sanomat, Finland’s biggest news media. Responsibilities: tools, products, coaching, trend watching, focus on automating news gathering processes. Before this, he worked for 6 years as a strategy analyst at the Finnish Broadcasting Company. Background in journalism. Badminton enthusiast!
Rebecka Prahl
Pronouns: she/her
Current location: Stockholm, Sweden
Country of origin: Sweden
Organization: Altinget
Role: Journalist and Editor
Rebecka Prahl is a Stockholm-based journalist specializing in political reporting. She currently works as a reporter and editor at Altinget, focusing primarily on education and labor market policy.
Natalie Holly Purviance
Pronouns: she/her
Current location: Atlanta, Georgia, United States Country of origin: United States
Organization: The Haitian Times
Role: Freelance Data Journalist
Natalie Holly Purviance is a documentarian, data journalist, and civic technologist whose work explores how societies archive, contest, and perform historical narratives, particularly in moments of political and informational instability. She brings together storytelling, computational media, and AI to investigate misinformation, civic trust, and the role of narrative in shaping public life. She holds a BA in Sociology and Anthropology and an MFA, and is trained in data journalism and computational methods through the Lede Program at Columbia Journalism School. Her current documentary-in-progress, supported by the Southern Documentary Fund and FilmShop’s DocShop South Works in Progress Lab, which she also co-leads, examines how migration and historical narrative intersect to shape ideas of democracy, citizenship, and belonging. As a 2026 CUNY AI Journalism Lab fellow, she is developing a multilingual civic context agent to enhance news comprehension and provide deeper historical and cultural context.
Natalia Ramirez Jaramillo
Pronouns: she/her
Current location: Bogotá, Colombia
Country of origin: Colombia
Organization: Radio Ambulante Studios
Role: Director of Strategic Communication and Futures Design
Natalia Ramirez Jaramillo is an expert in communication design and media management, a Sulzberger Fellow (2024) at Columbia University’s School of Journalism, and holds an M.A. in Media Studies from The New School in New York.
Sophia Smith Galer
Pronouns: she/her
Current location: London, United Kingdom
Country of origin: United Kingdom
Organization: Viralect
Role: Founder
Sophia Smith Galer is a multi-award-winning journalist, author and content creator based in London with more than 180 million video views for her storytelling around technology, language and culture. She has built a following of over 900,000 people and in 2022 British Vogue selected her as one of the 25 most influential women in the UK. A former BBC and VICE News journalist, Sophia is a leading voice within journalism innovation in British journalism, credited for pioneering vertical-video reporting and building the video scripting app Sophiana. The tool has won two journalism prizes and is used in more than 100 countries.
Suzana Souza
Pronouns: she/her
Current location: São Paulo, Brazil
Country of origin: Brazil
Organization: Nexo Jornal
Role: Product Strategist
Suzana Souza holds a bachelor’s degree in Journalism from the Federal University of Pernambuco and a postgraduate specialization in Agile Project Management. She works as a product strategist and news editor at Nexo Jornal, an independent national newsroom based in São Paulo, Brazil, where she leads initiatives that integrate editorial responsibility, technology development, and innovation. Her academic interests focus on the intersections of AI, product thinking, and agile methodologies in journalism. She is a fellow of Afroboost and ID_BR, both leadership programs dedicated to advancing Black professionals in Brazil. Suzana also volunteers with ICMBio, Brazil’s federal environmental conservation agency, contributing to projects that highlight the role of traditional communities in preserving sociobiodiversity. Her career is marked by a commitment to building sustainable solutions for digital journalism and expanding the representation of Black leadership within the media industry.
Lola Telo
Pronouns: she/her
Current location: New York, New York, United States
Country of origin: Cuba/United States
Organization: The Wall Street Journal
Role: Senior Data Scientist
Lola Telo is a senior data scientist on The Wall Street Journal’s newsroom data science and AI team. She drives audience-data strategies focused on understanding and growing newsroom readership with data and machine learning.
Charles Tharpe
Pronouns: he/him
Current location: Chicago, Illinois, United States
Country of origin: United States
Organization: Chicago Public Media
Role: Data Analyst
Charles Tharpe is a data analyst at the Chicago Public Media, where he leads cross-functional initiatives that enhance newsroom tools, workflows, and audience engagement. He specializes in translating audience insights and product data into strategies that guide experimentation and feature development using various data platforms. Before joining the Sun-Times, he worked at a start-up and with CalMatters, supporting product and analytics efforts that improved UX and data-driven storytelling. Charles holds a Master’s in Journalism with a specialization in Media Innovation and Content Strategy from Northwestern University.
Tom Vaillant
Pronouns: he/him
Current location: Zurich, Switzerland
Country of origin: France
Organization: Independent
Role: Journalist and Technologist
Tom Vaillant is a visual journalist, documentary filmmaker and technologist working in a Swiss newsroom. He reports on data-driven stories using maps, charts and video. He also builds AI tools to help journalists access and investigate data without technical barriers. His specialties are video, cartography, interactive graphics, 3D, and AI—combining OSINT techniques with visual storytelling to make complex stories accessible to large audiences.
Catho Van Den Bosch
Pronouns: she/her
Current location: Brussels, Belgium
Country of origin: Belgium
Organization: VRT
Role: Product Designer, AI Team
Catho Van Den Bosch is a product designer working in the AI team at VRT, the Flemish public broadcaster. Her work focuses on translating strategic insights and editorial user needs into practical, AI-driven products. At VRT, she leads the development of the Smart Content Assistant, an in-house AI tool that supports editorial teams in adapting content across platforms and tones of voice, helping newsrooms reach more people across different platforms by telling stories more broadly, while safeguarding journalistic quality. She also co-develops and delivers AI training sessions for journalists, supporting hands-on adoption of AI in daily editorial workflows. Catho regularly contributes to knowledge exchange within international networks such as the EBU and Nordic AI, and collaborates with media partners via the Future Media Hubs network. Previously, she worked on European and Flemish R&D projects within VRT’s innovation team. She holds a degree in Product Development from the University of Antwerp and completed part of her studies at the University of Oslo.
Naunidh Virk
Pronouns: he/him
Current location: Zurich, Switzerland
Country of origin: United Kingdom
Organization: Tamedia
Role: Analytics and BI Lead
Naunidh Virk is an Editorial, AI & Product Analytics Lead at Tamedia, Switzerland’s largest editorial network. He is passionate about how data and AI can enable our newsrooms and product teams to create engaging digital content and products. A recent highlight includes experimenting with and implementing an in-house AI-powered User Needs initiative, working with product and editorial teams to roll out an operational, company-wide framework. His team is also exploring using AI to deliver insights directly to their newsrooms, and has run experiments around liquid content and reader-facing chatbots. Beyond this, he is interested in how AI can extract novel metadata from content and enhance data literacy within the organisation. In 2024, he was recognised with the Schweizer Journalist:in Hidden Stars award for contributions to journalism from outside the newsroom. Outside of work, he loves cooking and enjoying the wonderful nature Switzerland has to offer.
Chen Wang
Pronouns: she/her
Current location: Toronto, Canada
Country of origin: China
Organization: The Globe and Mail
Role: Senior Data Editor
Chen Wang is a data reporter and editor at The Globe and Mail, Canada’s national newspaper. She brings seven years of experience in data-driven storytelling across a wide range of topics, producing everything from interactive explanatory features and tools to large-scale investigations. Chen thrives in collaborative, experimental environments and is passionate about developing new approaches to visual and data-focused narratives. She is also deeply interested in how emerging technologies can support journalism. Chen is hoping to explore ways to use AI to make data and visual storytelling more accessible across the newsroom—expanding creative possibilities, deepening coverage, and reaching audiences in more meaningful ways.
Victoria Wickberg
Pronouns: she/her
Current location: Stockholm, Sweden
Country of origin: Sweden
Organization: UR – Utbildningsradion
Role: Social Media Manager
Victoria Wickberg is a journalist, content manager and digital strategist based in Stockholm, Sweden. She works at UR, The Swedish Educational Broadcasting Company. By combining her pedagogical background with editorial expertise, Victoria specializes in making educational content accessible and engaging for diverse audiences. She has played a key role in developing her team’s social media strategies, utilizing data-driven insights and creative campaigns to increase reach and engagement. Victoria’s core strengths include audience analysis, inclusive communication, and digital content packaging for maximum impact. Recently, she has deepened her technical expertise within AI , and has independently developed apps to test practical, sustainable solutions. She is passionate about exploring how AI can empower journalists and broaden accessibility, while always maintaining a human-centered approach. Victoria is eager to deepen her understanding of both the opportunities and ethical challenges that AI brings to the field of media.