Bettina Peters

Bettina Peters is the director of the Global Forum for Media Development (GFMD), a network of some 500 media assistance organisations from around the globe. Before joining GFMD in July 2007, Bettina worked as the director of programmes at the European Journalism Centre, where she was in charge of EJC's programme of media support and journalism training, in particular in the Middle East/ North Africa and in Eastern Europe. From 1990 until 2002 Bettina worked at the International Federation of Journalists, first as European coordinator and later as Deputy General Secretary. She was instrumental in setting up the IFJ's Project Division and was responsible for the IFJ's global programme on media development and capacity-building for journalists' organisations. In the course of her work, Bettina has supervised and managed media development projects in more than 80 countries. She holds a Masters Degree in political science and journalism from the University of Hamburg and has edited a range of publications, including a global survey of women in journalism for the IFJ, the EJC handbook on Civic Journalism and the IFJ handbook on Human Rights Reporting in Africa. For the last five years, she has been a reviewer of the Freedom House Press Freedom Index. Most recently, she wrote the conclusions to European Media Policy, the Brussels Perspective, published in 2007. Born in Hamburg, Germany, Bettina now lives with her partner in Belgium.