Jessikka Aro is an award-winning reporter with Yle, the Finnish Broadcasting Company, specializing in Russia, extremism and information warfare. In 2014 and 2015, she published a series of articles on pro-Kremlin social media trolls and their influence outside of Russia’s borders. Due to her investigations, Jessikka became the target of a severe and still ongoing international propaganda and hate speech campaign, which she recounts in Putin’s Trolls. In 2019, the US State Department awarded Jessikka the International Women of Courage Award, but the award was mysteriously rescinded by the Trump administration, allegedly due to her social media criticism of then President Trump. On December 1, 2020 Jessikka Aro received the International Women’s Media Foundation Courage in Journalism Award, presented in partnership with the Washington Post and hosted by CNN’s Christiane Amanpour. Jessikka was recognized for her award-winning investigative reporting of Russian information warfare. Jessikka lives in Helsinki, Finland. Jessikka Aro’s Festival appearance is generously supported by FILI – Finnish Literature Exchange. Jessikka Aro appears as part of Nordic Bridges 2022.

Timothy Frye is the Marshall D. Shulman Professor of Post-Soviet Foreign Policy at Columbia University. Born in Utica, New York, he worked for the United States Information Agency in the Soviet Union in the late 1980s, advised the Russian Securities and Exchange Commission in the 1990s, and co-directed a research laboratory at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow from 2011-2022. His books include Building States and Markets After Communism: The Perils of Polarized Democracy and Property Rights and Property Wrongs: How Power, Institutions, and Norms Shape Economic Conflict in Russia. He lives in New York City.