VERASHNI PILLAY (South Africa)

Verashni Pillay is the founder of explain.co.za, a portal aimed at making news more accessible. She was previously editor-in-chief of the Mail & Guardian and HuffPost South Africa, and head of digital at Power FM. She worked as a senior reporter for years covering politics and general news and specialises in digital media management.

Verashni is a recipient of the CNN African Journalism Award in the digital category, several Standard Bank Sikuvile Awards, an Open Society Foundation journalism fellowship and the 2018 Mandela Washington Fellowship. Her experience of cyber bullying as editor of HuffPost SA led to her popular Tedx talk, The Cost of Shame.

She is passionate about finding new models of journalism to both sustain the work of journalism in a changing landscape where revenue is under threat, and to reach wider audiences – in South Africa and across the continent.