Tom Armstrong is the Vice President of Global Advertising at The New York Times. He is responsible for generating revenue from all the Times’s multiplatform products & services & leadership of the sales team across international markets. Previously, Tom was at Fairfax Media where he was the Chief Revenue Officer, leading a team across Fairfax Media’s publishing brands including: The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age & The Australian Financial Review. Before joining Fairfax, Tom spent 12 years with Paramount in London in various senior international roles focused on building the digital business for their flagship brands: MTV, Nickelodeon & Comedy Central. He held several positions at Discovery Networks & worked for a gaming start-up, Two Way TV, pioneering some of the world’s first interactive TV experiences.

Chris Packham is a conservationist and broadcaster known for his environmental and animal welfare activism. His TV credits include 'Springwatch' and 'Earth' for the BBC and 'Is it Time to Break the Law' for Channel 4. Alongside his ambassadorial roles for numerous NGO's he runs independent campaigns aimed at nature recovery and ending animal cruelty. Chris is also a vocal advocate for neurodiversity with a special focus on autism. His mantras are “winning is not giving up” and “shout above the noise”

My career spans three decades at the intersection of journalism and technology. I have reported from conflict zones, led global newsrooms, and advised News Corp, CNN, and Microsoft, among others.

In the early 2000s, I moved into tech, working in search and early AI, which led me to found Oovvuu, which uses AI to match videos and articles.

Last year, I launched the Future Media newsletter, to focus on the collision of Big Media and Big Tech, AI, future business models for media, and the global antitrust movement.

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Lisa Smosarski is the award-winning Editorial Director of Stylist. As well as engaging over 5 million women editorially through the magazine, website, social media and events each month, Lisa is a board director at The Stylist Group.

Lisa also writes Stylist’s career-focused How To Work column and companion email and hosts the Stylist Network event series. Prior to Stylist, Lisa edited more!, bliss and Smash Hits.

Sean is CEO of Immediate, home to trusted brands that people love, including Radio Times, Good Food, BBC Gardeners’ World magazine and HistoryExtra.

An experienced digital leader, in both fast-scaling and high-growth digital pure-plays and established global brands, Sean has a strong track record of building and leading significant revenue generating businesses, through accelerating growth, driving change and scaling operations. Sean joined Immediate in 2021 as Platforms CEO, with responsibility for Immediate’s digital businesses, and was appointed Immediate CEO in May 2023.

Sean has overseen the scaled growth of Immediate’s digital subscriptions business, with the launch of premium paid-for digital products in Food, History and Gardening, and the acquisition of Nutracheck, the UK’s leading subscription-based weight management and dietary improvement app. Immediate now has over 700,000 digital subscribers and is the UK’s leading media publisher for subscriptions across digital and print.

With over 20 years’ experience in senior leadership positions, Sean’s previous roles include CEO of Direct Ferries, Chief Digital & Marketing Officer of Travelex and MD International at eHarmony, as well as other senior general management and marketing roles at Google and various start-ups.

As Chief Executive Officer, Katie Vanneck-Smith has overall management responsibility for leading premium content and experience business, Hearst UK.

Katie has a wealth of experience innovating in the media industry, having worked for both large-scale corporations and more recently launching a successful startup.

Katie joined Hearst UK in December 2022 from Tortoise Media, a global media outlet that she co-founded in 2018. Prior to that, she was President and Chief Customer Officer of Dow Jones, where she helped build and lead The Wall Street Journal’s successful online membership-based business.

Katie has also held senior roles at The Telegraph Media Group and The Times. As Chief Marketing Officer at The Times, Katie led the architecture of the newspaper’s early move to paid digital subscriptions and was responsible for creating the UK’s first news membership brand, Times+. Katie also oversaw the company’s events programmes, including both The Wall Street Journal CEO Council and The Times CEO Summit.

Sajeeda Merali joined the PPA as CEO in 2021, with an agenda to transform the way the PPA represents and supports its 300+ UK multi-media business members, consumer magazine publishers, business-to-business data and information providers, customer magazine publishers and smaller independents.

A strategic leader with 20 years’ experience in the publishing industry, Sajeeda has held senior positions with both B2B and consumer-facing organisations, with extensive experience in change management and strategy development.

She joined the PPA from the New Statesman Media Group, where she was Chief Revenue Officer responsible for identifying high-value digital opportunities and launching commercial strategy for new brands in highly competitive markets.

Abi Spooner is Strategy Partner at Atlas, specialising in customer behavioural data analysis, forecasting and strategic planning, alongside delivering specialist subscriptions marketing training.

Abi worked as Customer Strategy Officer at Dennis and Future, and Chief Customer Officer at Dennis, where she created profitable customer-first strategies to drive acquisition, efficiency and yield across The Week globally. She also launched and grew The Week Junior UK and US as well as driving strategy for over 120 brands.

A highly skilled data storyteller, Abi makes complex analysis accessible and understood, from the board room to marketing teams and the wider business. She is at her happiest creating LTV models and believes creativity really can (and probably should) start with a spreadsheet.