Francine Hetherington Raveney is an expert in the fields of: sport policy, gender equality, diversity, project management, script analysis, audiovisual co-productions, and communication, amongst others. She obtained a Masters Degree in English and French Literature at The Queen’s College, Oxford University (1992-1996), a Masters Degree in Women’s Studies at The Queen’s College, Oxford University (1996-1997) and then carried out doctoral studies in France in politics and literature at Strasbourg University (1997-1998).

Since 2000, she has worked in a number of international organisations, including the Council of Europe, where she was a project manager for the Eurimages film fund for 11 years (2009-2020), and WHO Europe (2004-2005) where she was a Managing Editor. She is the founder, former Executive Director and currently an Honorary Member of the European Women’s Audiovisual (EWA) Network. She is also a member of the New Dawn Film Fund jury and regularly teaches pitching and gives presentations at festivals and universities throughout Europe.

Since April 2021 she has worked as the Deputy Executive Secretary of the Enlarged Partial Agreement on Sport (EPAS), where she oversees resources, works with the Governing Board and partner organisations to ensure that topical thematic activities (such as gender equality, diversity, integrity and good governance in sport) and conferences (e.g. on combating gender-based violence in sport) are dealt with smoothly and effectively.

Born in Dublin in Ireland, Glen Killane was educated at Trinity College Dublin where he gained a degree in English Literature and he holds a Masters degree in Journalism from Dublin City University. 

Glen began his career as a sports journalist working in editorial positions for RTE and for ITV in London where he was editor of live football. He was Group Head of Sport for RTE from 2004 until 2010 and was elected as Vice Chair of the EBU Sport Committee.

Before joining the EBU, Glen became Managing Director of Eir Sport and Eir TV, owned by Irish Telco Eir, where he led the launch of their OTT pay sports business and ran the company’s IPTV platform.

He was Managing Director of RTE Television from 2010 until 2016, during which time he was elected Chair of the EBU Television Committee.

Glen took over the role of Executive Director of Eurovision Sport in June 2020, stepping up from the position of Deputy Director of Eurovision Sport, a role he held since August 2018.

Christian Klaue (47) is the Corporate Communications and Public Affairs Director of the International Olympic Committee (IOC). He is a former journalist and returned to the IOC in January 2019 to become Associate Director in the Strategic Communications Department. The 1975-born East German led the department for nine months as Director ad interim before becoming its Director in October 2019.

He had already worked at the IOC from September 2015 to February 2018 in the Spokesperson’s Services Department as Head of Communications for German-Speaking Countries. He had come from the German Olympic Sports Confederation (DOSB) in Frankfurt, where he worked as Head of Media and Spokesperson from November 2009 with the then-DOSB President, Thomas Bach.

After leaving the IOC in February 2018, Christian  returned to the DOSB as Director for Marketing, Communication and International Affairs, from April 2018 until September 2018, and started working for the IOC again in September 2018 on a consultancy basis, before becoming Associate Director and Director ad interim in January 2019.

Before joining the DOSB in November 2009, Christian was, from autumn 2004, a journalist at the Sport-Informations-Dienst (SID) sports news agency in Cologne, which belongs to the Agence France-Presse (AFP) network. From the office in Berlin, he covered sports politics and athletics.

He has a degree in sport and communication from the German Sports University in Cologne, and has also worked in the Communications and Events Department of the German sports club Bayer 04 Leverkusen. From 1995 to 1997, he travelled around the world with the global education and culture organisation Up With People, first as a student and later as a staff member.

Charlotte Groppo has over 10 years of experience in the field of gender equality and intersectionality. She had the opportunity to work on anti-discrimination and gender equality policies at local, national, European and International level. As former Vice-president of UN Women France and former gender advisor to the Ministry in charge of gender equality, diversity and equal opportunities, she developed gender mainstreaming programmes and supported the implementation and monitoring of public policies aiming at eradicating gender based violence, promoting sexual and reproductive heath rights and deconstructing gender stereotypes.

Dr Jane Dennehy is a social science researcher, advisor and consultant specialising in gender equality, media and sport. She is currently teaching International Sport Development at University of London on the postgraduate sport management course and researching the role of image rights law in sport. Jane has contributed chapters to Gender Equity in UK Sport, Leadership and Governance (2022), Seven Faces of Women’s Sport (2019) and Gender Diversity in European Sport Governance, (2018). She completed her doctoral research on gender, competition and management at the London School of Economics following 15 years working in media and marketing.

As a strategic communicator and storyteller, Nadia has navigated between the private and public sector from corporate to media, PR agency to Olympic sport in both a local and international context. After six years at the International Olympic Committee (IOC) heading the Institutional Communications unit, she founded NB communication in 2019 — an independent consultancy based in Lausanne, Switzerland, providing creative, inclusive and strategic communication services and advisory. A keen wordsmith and portrayal & sport specialist, Nadia was raised on the premise that it’s not what you say, but how you say it, spurring her to put her passion for language and her fifteen years of communication experience to good use by leading educational seminars on portrayal & sport and advocating for more equality and inclusion through language. 

Jalinka Michaux is Communications Senior Manager at FIBA, the International Basketball Federation.

During her 16-year career as a professional and semi-professional basketball player and playing for the Swiss National Team, she completed studies in Political Science and Public Policies and Administration. Confronted with different types of discrimination in her sport and as a mixed-raced person in Switzerland, she is a fervent defender of equality and eradication of privileges in our society.

After over 10 years in the sports’ industry, she is currently in charge of media Operations for FIBA events, as well as media activities and services coordination for major events, including the Olympic Games. 

At FIBA, she is an active member of the working group on the strategic pillar "Women in Basketball". FIBA began working on this important part of its global strategy in 2019 and is making significant progress in its endeavours, putting in place some innovative and fresh ideas. 

Born in the Italian speaking part of Switzerland, the Canton of Ticino, from a Hungarian/Swiss mother and French/Guadeloupean father, she is passionate about increasing representation and opening doors in a more multi-cultural and open-minded Switzerland.

Kat is an award-winning human rights lawyer and CEO of Athlead, a sport and social impact consultancy that helps elite athletes tap into their unique ability to change the world, and advises some of the sector's most powerful stakeholders on preventing and remedying human rights abuses in sport. Kat is a Special Advisor to the Centre for Sport and Human Rights, where she leads the Roadmap to Remedy research project collaborating with victims, survivors and whistleblowers to co-create guidance on safe, effective and appropriate reporting, investigation and resolution mechanisms to tackle abuse in sport. 

Kat has supported hundreds of victims and survivors of abuse in sport across five continents and multiple sporting disciplines. She is a member of the IOC’s Safeguarding in Sport Certificate Academic Advisory Board, and was appointed an independent expert on FIFA's global steering group on developing an international Safe Sport Entity. Kat’s ground-breaking work has been repeatedly recognised by the industry: she won the Integrity & Impact Award at the Sport Industry Awards in 2022, and was featured in a global Nike campaign showcasing her work safeguarding women athletes from abuse. This year, Kat was honoured with the prestigious Celia Brackenridge Award for Services to Safe Sport, in recognition of her sustained impact towards ending all forms of interpersonal violence, abuse and harassment in sports environments. 

Dr Lombe Mwambwa, PhD is the Research Director at the Global Observatory for Gender Equality and Sport and a member of the University of Lausanne (UNIL) Institute of Sport Sciences. For about 20 years, she has worked with leaders of sport organisations and sport policy makers in Africa, Asia, and Europe. She is an Alum of the University of Zambia, the University of Zimbabwe, and the University of Chichester, UK. Dr Mwambwa is also Secretary General at the National Organisation for Women in Sport, Physical Activity and Recreation (NOWSPAR) in Zambia. She currently leads the work of the Global Observatory to establish a knowledge pool and repository to facilitate monitoring of progress on women, physical education, physical activity, and sport. 

Alex McLin is Director of the Gymnastics Ethics Foundatino, the body responsible for complaint handling and compliance in international gymnastics. As an attorney, he counsels International Sports Federations primarily on governance matters and is a member of the Governance Task Force of the Association of Summer Olympic International Federations (ASOIF). He is an active arbitrator, including at the Court of Arbitration for Sport, where he has adjudicated high-profile abuse cases. Formerly, he was CEO and Secretary General of the International Equestrian Federation, as well as Executive Director of the Swiss Arbitration Association. He has previously worked for the World Economic Forum as well as in technology, and is based in Lausanne, Switzerland. 

Riikka Smolander-Slotte is an award-winning sports journalist who works in the Finnish Broadcasting Company, Yle. She has a master´s degree in sports sciences. In her 20-year-long career she has worked in various roles. Smolander-Slotte enjoys a hectic newsroom as well as reporting live from the center of the action. In recent years she has focused on investigative journalism. In 2022 her story about unethical coaching methods in gymnastics became a nationally significant theme.

She has also published three books: biographies with rally driver Jari-Matti Latvala and basketball player Awak Kuier. To young readers she has written a novel which tells a story about a gymnast who suffers from unethical coaching.

Smolander-Slotte lives in Vantaa, near Helsinki with two teenage daughters, husband and labrador retriever.

Gloria Viseras joined the IOC Safe Sport Unit in the Medical and Scientific Department in September 2022 as Senior Project Manager coming from FIFA where was the Senior Event Safeguarding Manager.

At 15 she was the Artistic Gymnastics National Champion and one of the only 9 women who represented Spain in the Moscow Olympic Games in 1980. For the last decade, she has been a strong advocate for safe sport and working at national and international levels to support persons with lived experiences and help organizations implement safeguarding good practices as well as rights-based and trauma-informed strategies to ensure that sporting environments are safe and supportive for all participants, especially young athletes.

In Spain, in addition to her extensive awareness raising work, she coauthored the safeguarding policy and procedures currently implemented by the Spanish High Council for Sport and of mandatory implementation by all National Sports Federations.

At international level, she has extensively collaborated with the Council of Europe, the European Commission and other international organisations on different projects, conferences and activities.

At the IOC she is leading on the implementation of safeguarding measures and embedding safeguarding across the complete lifecycle of the Olympic Games and Youth Olympic Games, contributing to the development of educational materials for stakeholders across the Olympic Movement and supporting sports organisations in the development and implementation of safeguarding policies and procedures.

Olympian, former athlete with a 20-year career in figure skating, competing at the highest international level. National champion and team member representing Spain at Europeans, World championships and the XXII Olympic Winter Games Sochi 2014.

Sport Media & Communications specialist, experienced in a wide range of communications functions and project management, including content creation, writing, press office, digital marketing and social media, corporate communications and broadcasting at international sport and entertainment events.

IOC Young Leader and Olympic ambassador. Diversity, Equity & Inclusion advocate through sport, specialized in UN Sustainable Development Goals (10,3,5). Social Impact project founder: Compete Proud. 

International work experience in Spain, Canada, Switzerland and France with a great ability to adapt to new environments and challenges.

Evelyn Watta is a Kenyan Sports Journalist currently working as a producer and writer for the Olympic Channel and Olympics.com in Madrid.

She is also the Vice President of the International Sports Writers Association, AIPS headquartered in Lausanne.

Evelyn began her career in Kenya ovER20 years ago at the Broadcasting arm of the Nation Media Group, the largest media group in East and Central Africa. She has since worked across various media platforms contributing to newspapers, online and other digital platforms.

In 2014 she was named the CNN Africa journalist of the year, the first female journalist to win the sports category award. In 2015 she was named as one of the top 40 under 40 women in Kenya.

In recent years, she has broadened both her knowledge of the field of sport administration and sports journalism, as the Secretary General of the AIPS and also serves on various international sporting boards.

Elsa Arapi was born and raised in Athens, Greece. She studied philosophy, theatre and scriptwriting and recently completed a graduate degree in International Relations at Harvard University. She is a Senior Sports Rights Manager managing a portfolio of summer sports properties. Elsa is also the lead of the EBU Women’s Sport Initiative, building a business case for gender equality in sport on- and off-screen. She is the author of “Reimagining Sport – Pathways to gender-balanced media coverage” which has been included in the Olympic Library. 

Charlotte Groppo has over 10 years of experience in the field of gender equality and intersectionality. She had the opportunity to work on anti-discrimination and gender equality policies at local, national, European and International level. As former Vice-president of UN Women France and former gender advisor to the Ministry in charge of gender equality, diversity and equal opportunities, she developed gender mainstreaming programmes and supported the implementation and monitoring of public policies aiming at eradicating gender based violence, promoting sexual and reproductive heath rights and deconstructing gender stereotypes.

Francine Hetherington Raveney is an expert in the fields of: sport policy, gender equality, diversity, project management, script analysis, audiovisual co-productions, and communication, amongst others. She obtained a Masters Degree in English and French Literature at The Queen’s College, Oxford University (1992-1996), a Masters Degree in Women’s Studies at The Queen’s College, Oxford University (1996-1997) and then carried out doctoral studies in France in politics and literature at Strasbourg University (1997-1998).

Since 2000, she has worked in a number of international organisations, including the Council of Europe, where she was a project manager for the Eurimages film fund for 11 years (2009-2020), and WHO Europe (2004-2005) where she was a Managing Editor. She is the founder, former Executive Director and currently an Honorary Member of the European Women’s Audiovisual (EWA) Network. She is also a member of the New Dawn Film Fund jury and regularly teaches pitching and gives presentations at festivals and universities throughout Europe.

Since April 2021 she has worked as the Deputy Executive Secretary of the Enlarged Partial Agreement on Sport (EPAS), where she oversees resources, works with the Governing Board and partner organisations to ensure that topical thematic activities (such as gender equality, diversity, integrity and good governance in sport) and conferences (e.g. on combating gender-based violence in sport) are dealt with smoothly and effectively.