Media

Anastasiia Popko is a program coordinator with GMF’s Ukraine: Relief, Resilience, Recovery program, based in Berlin. She is responsible for the administrative part of the grantmaking program and for fostering relationships with grantees. Her primary focus is on strengthening the resilience of civil society and local media in Ukraine and the broader region.  

Prior to joining GMF, Anastasia worked as a partnership manager in Ukrainian online media, developing relations between European institutions and Ukrainian journalists. She has also worked on international cultural and art projects, as well as on decolonization, memory, and identity topics. 

Sameer Padania is a nonresident fellow with GMF Cities and runs the independent consultancy Macroscope, which works with diverse stakeholders—including independent media, philanthropy, civil society, businesses, think tanks, and governments—on strategies, policies, and funding mechanisms to defend, support, and grow public interest journalism ecosystems worldwide. He is working with the Public Interest News Foundation in the United Kingdom to help communities develop local news plans and to launch the country's first local news fund. His reports include the Forum on Information and Democracy’s global report, which calls on governments to deliver “A New Deal for Journalism”, and guides grantmaking to journalism, funding investigative journalism, and developing national funds for journalism. 

Padania has written about the funding environment for journalism in Europe for the Journalism Funders Forum and now writes a regular, independent newsletter. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, and is a trustee of the Indigo Trust, Doc Society and the Orwell Foundation.