Meet the Speakers
2026 Leadership + AI Summit
Kira Pollack - Global Jury Chair, World Press 2026
Keynote
Credit: Peter Hapak
Kira Pollack is a New York-based visual journalist, researcher, and entrepreneur working at the intersection of photography, artificial intelligence, and the future of the visual record. She served as 2026 Global Jury Chair of World Press Photo, and recently completed a Walter Shorenstein Media & Democracy Fellowship at Harvard Kennedy School and a fellowship at Stanford and USC's Starling Lab, where she researched how AI can contextualize photographic archives and preserve photographer authorship and legacy. Previously, she was Director of Photography at TIME, where she directed landmark projects including "100 Most Influential Photographs of All Time," Creative Director at Vanity Fair, and Deputy Photo Editor at The New York Times Magazine. Her work has been recognized with two Emmy Awards, five National Magazine Awards, and a Lucie Award for Photo Editor of the Year. She is the founder of Corpus Labs.
Yair Adato, CEO - Bria AI
Leadership Session II – Building an AI Ecosystem We Can Trust
Yair Adato is an executive-level Machine Learning and Computer Vision expert with a passion for bridging technology and business. In 2020, he co-founded Bria with a vision to build a responsible, open platform for visual generative Al. Bria is pioneering responsible GenAl, democratizing the technology to enhance products and set new industry benchmarks.
Yair holds a PhD in Computer Science, specializing in Computer Vision, from Ben-Gurion University in collaboration with Harvard University. He previously served as CTO of Trax Retail, where he helped drive the company's growth from a 20-person early-stage startup to a Unicorn with over 850 employees. Yair also advises several companies, including Sparx, Vicomi, Tasq, DataGen, and Anima.
Stefano De Alessandri, CEO & MD - ANSA News Agency
Leadership Session I – Leading Through Transformation: Leadership in the Changing Digital Media Ecosystem
Stefano De Alessandri became the Chief Executive Officer and General Manager of ANSA on September 6, 2018. He has a degree in economics from Milan's Bocconi University and a wealth of experience in the general management of media-publishing companies and in management consulting.
After starting his career at Mediaset, he held a general management position at RCS Media Group, Condé Nast, Mondadori and Hachette Rusconi. Between 2013 and 2018 he was a partner and MED Region board member at EY (Ernst & Young).
Currently he holds important positions at the Italian Publisher Association, President of the European Alliance of News Agencies (EANA) and board member of the Alliance of Mediterranean News Agencies (AMAN).
Ruha Devanesan, Head of Images & Media Partnerships - Google Search
Leadership Session II – Building an AI Ecosystem We Can Trust
Ruha Devanesan leads the Partnerships team responsible for engaging the Image Ecosystem for Google Search. Prior to this, she led Trust Partnerships and Crisis Response Partnerships for Search. Ruha has a J.D. and Masters in International Relations from Boston University and is a former Fellow of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School.
Kristen Heitmann, Global Chief Revenue Officer
Leadership Session I – Leading Through Transformation: Leadership in the Changing Digital Media Ecosystem
Kristin Heitmann is senior vice president and chief revenue officer for The Associated Press, responsible for all of AP's revenue functions globally. Heitmann joined AP in January 2022 and leads a division. Prior to joining AP, she served as chief commercial officer for media and marketing solutions at Dow Jones, responsible for driving a turnaround in the company's advertising business.
Heitmann held various digital, strategy, and business development roles at The Wall Street Journal and its parent company for over a decade. Before that, she led large-scale strategic projects as chief transformation officer and previously oversaw revenue optimization for digital projects as the general manager of WSJ Digital. Heitmann holds an undergraduate degree from Brown University, a master's from the University of California-Berkeley, and a Master of Business Administration from New York University.
Leslie Hughes, CEO - iSPY Technologies
Executive Director, DMLA
Keynote + Roundtable Moderator
Leslie Hughes is Founder and CEO of iSPY Technologies, a visual search, discovery and productivity platform helping users find and license visual content. A digital media executive and entrepreneur with more than 30 years of leadership experience, she has held executive roles at the intersection of content and technology, including President of Corbis Images and Group CEO of Imagestate PLC, before founding her own companies.
Leslie also serves as Executive Director, Board Member & Immediate Past President of the Digital Media Leadership Alliance (DMLA).
Mounir Ibrahim, Chief Communications Officer, Head of Public Affairs & Impact – Truepic
Leadership Session II – Building an AI Ecosystem We Can Trust
Mounir Ibrahim is the Chief Communications Officer and Head of Public Affairs and Impact for Truepic, an award winning technology company specializing in provenance and image authenticity. Mounir was a Foreign Service Officer with the U.S. Department of State and key Syria adviser to various Ambassadors and Presidential Cabinet Members. Mounir served in Damascus, Washington, Istanbul, Bogota, and New York at the US Mission to the United Nations. Mounir is an adjunct professor at Columbia University, TEDX speaker, term member with the Council on Foreign Relations, and his writing has been featured by the Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, World Economic Forum, and The Hill. Mounir received his BA in International Relations and Political Science from American University and his MA in International Affairs from Columbia University.
Steve Jones, CEO – Pocstock
Leadership Session I – Leading Through Transformation: Leadership in the Changing Digital Media Ecosystem
Steve Jones is the CEO of postock, a data and media company building culturally intelligent datasets for artificial intelligence. Under his leadership, pocstock has evolved from a stock content platform into a scalable Al data business, supplying training data and content to leading technology companies. Steve is a seasoned technology executive and serial entrepreneur with more than 25 years of experience building and scaling companies across digital media, data, and enterprise services. Prior to pocstock, Steve founded and led an award-winning digital agency where he built and managed multidisciplinary teams across engineering, creative, and strategy. His work has been featured in Forbes, TechCrunch, Adweek, Afrotech, and Black Enterprise, and he has been named to Adweek's Top 100 Creative Minds. He is also a frequent speaker on artificial intelligence, entrepreneurship, and the future of work.
Steve is also a member of the Board of Directors of the Digital Media Leadership Alliance (DMLA)
Mikayel Khachatryan, CEO - Wirestock
Leadership Session I – Leading Through Transformation: Leadership in the Changing Digital Media Ecosystem
Before founding Wirestock in 2019, Mikayel was involved with several photo editing and social products, focusing on monetization and product development, which developed a deep understanding of how creative tools scale and how creator economies function. That combination of economic vision and product experience is what led him to see the structural opportunity at the intersection of the creator economy and Al data demand. Not just as a marketplace problem, but as an infrastructure problem worth solving from the ground up. This inspired him to found Wirestock, which builds premium, human-crafted visual training data for foundation model development, spanning video, image, 3D modalities and more, including Pretraining, SFT, RL, and RLHF pipelines. Our global network of contributors in photography, videography, illustration, graphic design, 3D, and other creative disciplines earn consistent, predictable income through the paid creative projects that power this work.
Yonah Levenson, Co-Founder | Instructor DAM - Certificate Program Rutgers University
Leadership Session II – Building an AI Ecosystem We Can Trust
Yonah is a metadata and taxonomy thought leader and strategy consultant who draws on her vast multi-industry and DAM experiences to guide organizations through their challenges. She has worked in the media and entertainment space (WarnerMedia, HBO and others), publishing (Pearson Ed, HarperCollins, Thomson), as well as ID registries.
Yonah is the Co-Founder & Instructor of the Rutgers University's DAM Certificate Program. She developed the curriculum, wrote several of the courses, and continues to teach. She is the founder and chair of the Language Metadata Table (LMT), a universal standard for language codes. She has and continues to present at various industry conferences where she shares her insights on best practices.
Paul Melcher, Founder and Managing Director - Melcher Systems
Leadership Session II – Building an AI Ecosystem We Can Trust
Paul Melcher has spent more than twenty years at the center of how images move, sell, and get believed. American Photo named him one of the "100 most influential individuals in American photography." He now runs MelcherSystem, an independent consultancy advising Fortune 50 brands, imaging technology companies, and media organizations across four continents on Al, licensing, digital asset management, and content authenticity. He sits inside the standards work through the Content Authenticity Initiative, AMAS and C2PA, holds a strategic partnerships role at Imatag, and advises Santa Cruz Software and Activo on Al. He founded and actively contributes to Kaptur, the first publication devoted to visual tech.
Mark Milstein, Data Partnerships & Strategic Development - Microstock Solutions
Moderator, Leadership Session II – Building an AI Ecosystem We Can Trust
Mark Milstein is a technology entrepreneur and strategic leader with over two decades of experience at the intersection of visual media, data, and generative Al. He is Director of Partnerships at Microstocksolutions, which he founded in 2008, and previously co-founded vAlsual, building the world's largest licensable biometric dataset for Al training. A former war photographer who covered more than 20 conflicts.
Mark now serves as Technology Chairman and Board Member of the Digital Medial Leadership Alliance (DMLA).
Joe Naylor, CEO - ImageRights, International
Moderator, Leadership Session I – Leading Through Transformation: Leadership in the Changing Digital Media Ecosystem
Joe Naylor is the Founder & CEO of ImageRights International, Inc., a company he co-founded with professional photographer Ted VanCleave in 2008 to provide innovative solutions for online copyright protection and compliance monitoring. Through his work at ImageRights, Joe has been instrumental in helping commercial photographers, photo agencies, publishers, and institutions safeguard their intellectual property in the digital age. Under his leadership, ImageRights has developed scalable technology solutions that enable organizations to monitor, identify, and address IP compliance challenges efficiently and at scale.
Joe also serves as the Board President of the Digital Media Leadership Alliance (DMLA) and as a member of the Library of Congress Copyright Public Modernization Committee, where he provides input on the development of federal copyright technology systems.
Frédéric Sanuy, CEO - Activo
Leadership Session I – Leading through Transformation: Leadership in the Changing Digital Media Ecosystem
Frédéric Sanuy is CEO and co-founder of ACTIVO, a Paris-based consultancy specializing in Digital Asset Management (DAM), Product Information Management (PIM), and content technology strategy. He has led global DAM and PIM programs for brands including Michelin, Decathlon, Adeo, Accor, and Longchamp.
Following ACTIVO's 2023 acquisition of DAM News, the industry's leading independent publication, Frédéric founded ACTIVO UK and created ACTIVO.tv, home to the industry's most extensive DAM content library.
Eric Wengrowski, Founder and CEP - Steg AI
Moderator, Leadership Session II – Building an AI Ecosystem We Can Trust
Dr. Eric Wengrowski is the CEO and Co-founder of Steg.Al, where he applies his expertise in computer vision, machine learning, photographic steganography, computational imaging, and image forensics. He holds a PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Rutgers University and completed postdoctoral research at NYU's Center for Cybersecurity. His experience includes research roles at Microsoft Research, Siemens Healthcare, and Kitware, where he contributed to advanced imaging and digital forensics projects. Eric is also a winner of the 2019 LDV Summit Entrepreneurial Computer Vision Challenge and an alumnus of the National Science Foundation Innovation Corps.