Ben Whitelaw is currently Engagement Lead on the Engaged Journalism Accelerator, a programme run out of the European Journalism Centre, where is responsible for the growth and engagement of grantees and heads up programme content and resources. The Accelerator is a $1.7m programme that provides funding, mentoring, resources and events to support a more participative kind of journalism across European news organisations of all sizes. In October, it announced its first four grantees from Spain, Greece, Ukraine and the UK and it will announce a further eight at the end of January. The programme is supported by the Craig Newmark Journalism School at CUNY and Civil, the blockchain-enabled journalism community. Prior to joining the Accelerator, he was Head of Audience Development at The Times and The Sunday Times in London. Over seven years there, he built an award-winning team, ran several high profile editorial campaigns, including Cities fit for Cycling, and helped both newsrooms reach 500,000 subscribers before leaving in 2018. Ben has also worked at The Guardian as a health and government IT journalist and set up Wannabe Hacks, a online platform dedicated to helping young journalists get into the industry.