Founding Board Members
 | Chairman: Nils Hanson, journalist and editor. Hanson was for 15 years editor of the weekly investigative journalism program “Uppdrag Granskning” (Mission Investigate) on Swedish national public service television. |
 | Treasurer: Daniel Simons, lawyer specializing in communications and freedom of expression-related issues. Simons is Dutch, but mainly based in Copenhagen, Denmark. |
 | Secretary of the board: Elisabetta Tola, an Italian science, tech and data journalist, has worked on several crossborder investigative projects. She is also a media trainer on digital journalism and verification. |
Journalistic and management staff
 | Director: Brigitte Alfter, journalist and author, leading the organisation on its way to being a journalistic forum for collaboration in Europe. See CV |
 | Managing director: Sanne Schim van der Loeff focuses on the organizational and financial sides of Arena’s development. |
 | Project director: Trine Smistrup, journalist and trainer, now working with communications and conference coordination for Arena and Dataharvest, the European Investigative Journalism Conference. See CV |
 | Project director: Jose Miguel Calatayud, journalist, working with the Arena Housing Project and contributing to other tasks at Arena and Dataharvest, the European Investigative Journalism Conference. See CV |
 | Project coordinator: Jelena Prtoric is a freelance journalist reporting (mostly) on the environment, human rights, and migration. She coordinates the climate&energy network and is community manager for the housing network. See CV |
 | Project manager: Ruben Brugnera is a Brussels-based investigative journalist and lecturer at the Thomas More school of journalism. For Dataharvest in Mechelen, he coordinates the volunteers and takes care of conference logistics. |
 | Data skills coordinator: Adriana Homolová is a Slovak-born Netherlands-based freelance data journalist and Python trainer,. For Arena she is coordinating the hands-on data skills track for the Dataharvest conference. |
 | IT and tech manager: Benedikt Hebeisen is a freelance IT consultant and journalist based in Berlin. He manages all digital things for the Dataharvest and Arena. |
 | Project coordinator: Maike Olij is an Amsterdam based journalism researcher, consultant and innovator. She coordinates the New Crowd network, the self-organizing body of independent news organisations in Europe. |