Paul Lewis

Paul Lewis, President of PL Productions, has more than three decades of experience as a broadcasting and production executive in Canada. He has created, developed and commissioned some of the world’s most successful factual television and digital content. Until 2015, Paul has been President and General Manager of the Discovery Networks in Canada where he initiated international Co-productions and key strategic partnerships with broadcasters in many countries. He created the world’s first daily television science magazine program and ambitious multi-platform projects. Paul is Founding Board member of the World Congress of Science and Factual Producers and the Canadian Science Media Centre of Canada. He has spoken at numerous conferences, workshops and documentary festivals worldwide.

Markus Nikel

After graduating from Philosophy at University of Hamburg, Germany, Markus Nikel has been working as an author, producer and editorial supervisor of educational and factual television programs and multimedia productions. For RAI, the Italian Public Broadcaster, he has worked on a variety of programs and websites for youngsters and school education as well as for adult education, dealing with subjects like Philosophy, History, Art History,Citizenship and Language Learning. The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) in Geneva, has appointed him twice as Executive Producer for co-productions of TV series. Markus is representing RAI as an active member and currently Vice-Chair of EBU’s Science and Knowledge Experts Group. Markus’ work focuses on establishing and coordinating international co-productions between television programs and cross-media projects.

     Pat Ferns

Pat Ferns is President of Ferns Productions Inc. and has produced some of Canada’s finest award-winning programming and the world's leading media events. He presents his signature pitching sessions worldwide. In 2017, he will moderate CoPro 19, CCDF-8 and GZDOC. Pat is currently engaged in the Canada/Germany co-production Whale Talk. He recently completed China:The Miraculous Transformation, a feature-length documentary on Deng Xiaoping and served as Executive Producer on an 8-part series 1491: The Untold Story of the Americas Before Columbus. Called in his native land “the father of independent production”, Pat was awarded The Order of Canada in 2005 for his services to the industry.