Inma selects new office bearers, includes South African Sandy Naudé

Sandy Naudé, CEO of African community media, Independent Media © Inma website

Eduardo Garces, general manager of Colombia’s El Espectador, was elected president of Inma, marking the first Spanish Latin American to hold the two-year post in the association’s 87-year history.

Damian Eales, chief operating officer of News Corp Australia, was elected Inma vice-president. Pursuant to association by-laws, Eales is scheduled to serve as Inma president in 2019-2021.

Having served as Inma president the past two years, Mark Challinor, commercial director for Trinity Mirror in the UK, will serve as immediate past president.

Board members

Board members elected to new terms at the Inma Annual Business Meeting are:

• Pit Gottschalk, editor-in-chief, Funke Media, Germany
• Sandy MacLeod, chief operating officer/print, Toronto Star, Canada
• Frank Mahlberg, MD, Bild/BZ Axel Springer, Germany
• Murdoch MacLennan, CEO, Telegraph Media Group, UK (affirmed by members after an appointment in late 2016)
• Sandy Naudé, CEO of African community media, Independent Media, South Africa
• Maribel Wadsworth Perez, senior VP and chief transformation officer, Gannett US
• Pam Siddall, president, Advance Central Services, US

During the annual business meeting, held in conjunction with the 87th Annual Inma World Congress of News Media in New York, retiring board members, cited for their contributions to Inma included, Laura Evans of the New York Times, Jim Moroney of The Dallas Morning News, and Harold Grönke of Nordwest Zeitung. Yasmin Namini, formerly of the New York Times, steps down as immediate past president after 14 years of service on the Inma board of directors.