Faculty
Jodie Hopperton
Jodie Hopperton is the lead for INMA's Product & Tech Initiative and runs projects and study tours for the association. She is a British media executive based in Los Angeles whose career has featured corporate roles, technology start-ups, moderating events, authoring, and speaking at news industry events. She has served as interactive manager for Trinity Mirror, director of syndication and licensing for The New York Times, and as a consultant to media and tech start-ups focused on video distribution, VR, audio tech, and more. Prior to her work with INMA, Jodie’s work with press associations included the Global Editors Network (GEN) and WAN-Ifra. In two stops in cities she loves, Jodie was the co-creator and owner of the Guiri Guide in Madrid, a premium information source for youthful expatriates, and the author of Los Angeles Reinvented: Why Innovators Are Moving South of Silicon Valley to the Booming Home of Hollywood.
Amalie Nash
Amalie Nash is the lead for INMA's Newsroom Transformation Initiative, which focuses on bringing newsrooms into the business of news, cultural change and effectively using data to inform content strategy. Amalie, a longtime American media executive, also is the head of transformation for the nonprofit National Trust for Local News in the United States and is a coach for the Local Media Association on digital subscription strategies. Previously, she was senior vice president of local news and audience development for Gannett | USA Today Network, overseeing more than 250 local newsrooms of various sizes. Earlier in her career, she was executive editor and vice president of audience engagement at The Des Moines Register in Iowa, a senior managing editor at the Detroit Free Press and news director at the Ann Arbor News, both in her home state of Michigan.
Greg Piechota
Greg Piechota is researcher-in-residence and lead of the Readers First Initiative for INMA. As an ex-fellow at Harvard and Oxford universities, Greg studies technology-enabled disruption patterns across industries with a focus on business model innovation in news media. He is a former media executive beginning at Poland’s Gazeta Wyborcza as a reporter and rising to a news editor and vice president of Agora Foundation. His research work at Harvard Business School focused on digital business model innovations, while his project at Oxford’s Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism examined the impact of digital platforms on paid content models of news organisations. Greg is the author of the 2019 book, Unlocking the Customer Value Chain, which he co-wrote with Thales Teixeira. He has authored several reports for INMA on subscriptions and data. Based in Oxford in the United Kingdom, Greg launched INMA’s Readers First Initiative and Smart Data Initiative and served in volunteer capacities for INMA: Europe Division president and board member and a member of the association’s International Board of Directors.
Sonali Verma
Sonali Verma leads INMA's Generative AI Initiative, surfacing practical use cases at news brands and sharing her expertise with the INMA community through conferences, newsletters, Webinars, and workshops. She is an executive media consultant who worked at The Globe and Mail for 15 years, where she led a mind shift in getting journalists to understand how data and AI could make them more effective in attracting and retaining subscribers. She also collaborated with The Globe’s data science team to build Sophi.io, a machine-learning platform that is now used by media companies on five continents. She was Sophi’s senior product manager and director of customer success, and also oversaw marketing efforts that won several international awards. She previously worked as a journalist at Reuters, CNBC, and Bloomberg in Asia, North America, and Europe. She was a visiting fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford University and an advisor to Harvard's Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy.
Robert Whitehead
Robert Whitehead is the lead for INMA's Digital Platform Initiative and runs projects and moderates for INMA events worldwide. He is an Australian media executive with a broad range of experiences in editorial, marketing, and production who today advises and invests in start-ups. The bulk of Robert’s career has been spent at Fairfax Media where he was production director, group publishing director, editor of the Sydney Morning Herald, and head of marketing at the newspaper and group levels. Today, he serves as an advisor to and investor in start-ups. A long-time member of INMA’s International Board of Directors, he also served as president and board member of the Pacific Area Newspaper Publishers Association (INMA) and was a co-creator of The Newspaper Works.
Earl J. Wilkinson
Earl J. Wilkinson is executive director and CEO of the International News Media Association (INMA). During his career, Earl has written reports and books related to the future of media, marketing, and the strategic outlook for the news media industry. The Texas native is a frequent speaker at media industry conferences worldwide. His views on where news media companies fit into the emerging landscape are sought after by the world's leading companies, and he is widely quoted in trade magazines, newspapers, industry Web sites, and more. During his nearly three decades INMA, he has helped transform the association into one of the world's fastest-growing and most influential press associations. He has logged more than 5 million air miles visiting the leading media companies in 51 countries.