Ed Kashi is a prolific photojournalist who uses photography, filmmaking and social media to explore geopolitical and social issues that define our times. He is also a dedicated educator and mentor to photographers around the world and lectures frequently on visual storytelling, human rights and the world of media.

His early adoption of hybrid visual storytelling has produced a number of influential short films. Kashi’s embrace of new approaches to visual storytelling has led to creative social media and printed projects for a range of clients including National Geographic, Open Society Foundations, The New Yorker, MSNBC, GEO Germany, Fortune, Human Rights Watch, International Medical Corps, MediaStorm, NBC.com, New York Times Magazine, Oxfam, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and TIME magazine. In his 2006 Iraqi Kurdistan Flipbook, to real-time Instagram coverage of Hurricane Sandy for TIME Magazine.

In 2002, Kashi in partnership with his wife, writer + filmmaker Julie Winokur, founded Talking Eyes Media. They are currently engaged in a 7-year storytelling project with Rutgers University in Newark focused on immigration for which they recently received a two year grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Their project, Newest Americans, was just awarded Best Online Project of the Year from Pictures of the Year International.

Kairat is a cofounder of Binocle Media and film script writer with such works as Easy Money, The Last Ship, Wife.

He is an ex-publisher of Vlast online magazine where he developed The Art of Storytelling festival, an annual event for journalists and media experts involving Pulitzer prize winners and journalists from The New York Time, Guardian, Quartz, Meduza, The Atlantic, etc.

Kairat also authored The Polygon crowdfunded project. The Polygon was an online resource on Semipalatinsk Nuclear Test Site composed by kazakh journalists using archive materials, interviews and documentary films.

Currently Kairat is developing Binocle Media.

Kanat is a young Film Director and documentalist from Kazakhstan. He graduated from The New York Film Academy’s Visual Art programme. Today, he is an independent movie director specializing in human stories.

His awards include:

The Best advertising documentary film “Neighbours@ - Red Jolbars, 2018.

Eurasian Union award for the development of documentary film, 2019

Kanat worked as a camera operator at Netflix’s Home Game documentary series. So far, he made over 50 documentaries and gained 160k followers on his YouTube Channel.

Julie Winokur, Executive Director of Talking Eyes Media, has been a storyteller for over two decades, first as a magazine writer and then as a documentary filmmaker.

She launched Talking Eyes Media in 2002 as a way to create visual media that catalyzes positive social change. Her work has appeared on PBS, the Documentary Channel, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Time, MediaStorm and National Geographic. Beyond broadcast and publication, Winokur works extensively with nonprofit organizations to develop their messages and put Talking Eyes' films to work at the grassroots level. She is the co-founder of Newest Americans, a storytelling project about immigration and identity based in Newark, New Jersey, that was named Best Online Storytelling Project in 2020 by Pictures of the Year International. She is also the producer of Bring It to The Table, a documentary film and interactive project aimed at breaking down hyper-partisanship. Winokur is a National Geographic Explorer and has been on the faculty of Rutgers University-Newark and the International Center of Photography in New York.

Youyou is a New York-based data journalist working with graphics and code. She produces data-driven, visual, interactive, and experimental journalism that breaks free of words-based formats.

Jamilya is a Journalist, Editor and Producer. She produced judicial reports and investigations for Ratel.kz and coproduced HolaNews investigations that won Urker-2019 award for the best journalistic investigation.

Jamilya founded ProTenge to track embezzlements of public funds. It is followed by 48,000 people on Instagram and 6,000 on Telegram. She trains and mentors at Internews Kazakhstan, Media School CABAR.Asia, Kazakhstani Youth Information Service and Prague Civic Center.

Olga is a professional media trainer. She trains speakers at TEDx Astana and coordinates The Scientific Journalism School.

Aizhan is a professional Journalist, Editor and the head of Peremena Media, a website for parents and teachers. In 2021 she and her companions organized the first Central Asian school of scientific journalism. She is also a full-time Media Consultant on scientific coverage and visualization.

Askhat was a journalist for 9 years. He worked for a local radio and Kazakhstan's national media. Also, worked as a web-journalist for 4 years. Currently he is teaching Media Literacy, Data Journalism and New Media courses at the Suleyman Demirel University, Kaskelen city, Kazakhstan.

Aliya Sandybaeva is the curator of popular science conference TEDxAstana since 2016. Specializing in  PR & communications, certified expert in change management. Producer, curator of educational projects in the field of medicine and science.