Speaker Database / 1,371 Speakers
The Personal Democracy Forum was a conference that ran for over 15 years and took place in NYC, Europe and Central America.
Ed Niles is the Lead Media Strategist for Bluelabs. He is focused on using BlueLabs’ expertise in predictive modeling and data-driven targeting to optimize media spending and messaging for partner groups. Ed was the Data and Analytics Director for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s 2014 Independent Expenditure, where he developed and tested new methods to maximize the IE’s paid media resources. His political career spans from Senator John Edward’s Presidential Campaign, to the Voter Activation Network (the VAN), the Atlas Project, and Manan Trivedi’s first bid for Congress in Pennsylvania. Ed started his career as a data analyst for a major telecom carrier.
Edward Snowden is a former intelligence officer who served the CIA, NSA, and DIA for nearly a decade as a subject matter expert on technology and cybersecurity. In 2013, he revealed the NSA was unconstitutionally seizing the private records of billions of individuals who had not been suspected of any wrongdoing, resulting in the largest debate about reforms to US surveillance policy since 1978. He has received awards for courage, integrity, and public service, and was named the top global thinker of 2013 by Foreign Policy magazine. Today, he works on methods of enforcing human rights through the application and development of new technologies. He joined the board of Freedom of the Press Foundation in February 2014.
Elana Levin serves as Communications Manager at the Drum Major Institute for Public Policy, a New York-based think tank generating ideas that fuel the progressive movement. DMI is noted for using the lens of the middle class squeeze to analyze national and local policy. As Communications Manager Elana has worked to innovate how think tank messages are disseminated. She runs the highly regarded DMIblog (www.dmiblog.com), a blog dedicated to building a conversation over public policy by tapping the collective wisdom of experts, organizers, activists and the netroots at large. As a former community organizer who worked on local New York issues, Elana also serves on the steering committee of Blogging Liberally, a network of New York-area progressive bloggers started by the founders of Drinking Liberally, a weekly cocktail hour for progressives and also hosts the Williamsburg Brooklyn chapter.
Having worked in communications for much of her career, Eleanor has extensive experience of both internal and external communications and Transparency and Open Data. Currently Head of Transparency for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office she is responsible for driving the necessary institutional change within the department and the release of its information and supporting the UK Governments international programmes and objectives in Transparency and Open Data through the Open Government Partnership and other initiatives as well as working to embed digital methodologies and processes in the day to day work of a foreign affairs ministry.
Some of her achievements in introducing new technologies and policies into government include:
- Ensuring that digital media are included in the production, reporting and evaluation of Government policy and initiatives
- Launching data.gov.uk working with Sir Tim Berners-Lee, Sir Nigel Shadbolt and Andrew Stott to facilitate the release and reuse of government data
- Pioneering the use of hack days or collaborative events to inform/develop foreign policy
- Defining security and propriety rules for civil servants working with and using social media
- Developing and promoting the use of web 2.0 and social media technology within the secure network of the civil service to improve knowledge sharing and efficiency
NY Attorney General and New York Democratic gubernatorial canidate.
Eliot Spitzer took office in 1999 and through a series of innovative actions has redefined the role of Attorney General.
He began his career in public service as a clerk to U.S. District Court Judge Robert W. Sweet and later served as an Assistant District Attorney in Manhattan under Robert Morgenthau from 1986-1992, rising to become Chief of the Labor Racketeering unit where he successfully prosecuted organized crime and political corruption cases. He also spent time in private practice with Paul Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton and Garrison, and Skadden Arps, Slate, Meagher and Flom. He was also a partner at Constantine & Partners.
Since taking public office he has investigated conflicts of interest by investment banks, illegal trading practices by mutual funds and bid rigging in the insurance industry. He has recovered billions of dollars for small investors and other consumers in these cases and was the catalyst for industry-wide reforms.
He was named “Crusader of the Year” by Time magazine; the “Sheriff of Wall Street” by 60 Minutes; and “The Enforcer” by People magazine. Reader’s Digest magazine called him America’s “Best Public Servant.”
Elizabeth Eagen is a program manager with the Open Society Information Program. Eagen’s work focuses on the use of new media tools in knowledge management. Her portfolio includes projects addressing human rights and policy issues using data sets, and advocacy campaigns employing data-visualization tools and tactics. Previously, she was a joint program manager with the Information Program and the Human Rights Initiative, where she established the Human Rights Data Initiative, and the Human Rights and Governance Grants Program, with country portfolios in Armenia, Georgia, and Russia.
Eagen holds a dual MPP–MA in public policy and Russian–East European studies from the University of Michigan, and a BA in international studies and Russian from Macalester College in Saint Paul, Minnesota.
Elizabeth Edwards shares her husband’s deep commitment to improving the daily lives of all Americans and making sure that everyone in this country has the opportunity to succeed. A passionate advocate for children and families, as well as an accomplished attorney, she has been a tireless advocate for many important causes.
Elizabeth is the daughter of a decorated Navy pilot. In her early years, she attended school in Japan, where her father was stationed with a reconnaissance squadron, flying missions over China and North Korea. As an undergraduate at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Elizabeth majored in English. She went on to study American literature but then switched to law, graduating from UNC Law School in May 1977. She met John in law school, and they got married the Saturday after they took the bar exam.
Like her husband, Elizabeth has an impressive legal background. Following law school, she clerked with U.S. District Court Judge Calvitt Clarke, Jr. in Norfolk, Virginia. Later, she worked for the North Carolina Attorney General’s office and then was a bankruptcy lawyer in Raleigh, North Carolina. Elizabeth also taught legal writing as an adjunct instructor at UNC Law School for two years, and in 1997-98, she was a member of the first group of Public Fellows at the College of Arts and Sciences at UNC.
Both Elizabeth and her husband are strongly committed to strengthening communities and expanding educational opportunities for all children. She volunteered with the Parent Teacher Associations at her children’s schools, and has been active in their youth soccer leagues in several roles.
In 1996, John and Elizabeth helped establish the Wade Edwards Foundation, and helped build a free computer lab – the Wade Edwards Learning Lab – for high school students in Raleigh. Recently, the foundation opened a similar computer lab in Goldsboro. Elizabeth volunteered at the lab in Raleigh nearly every day, until the family came to Washington following her husband’s 1998 election to the U.S. Senate. The Wade Edwards Foundation also runs a statewide short fiction contest for North Carolina’s high school juniors, awarding scholarships and grants to high school English students.
The country got to know Elizabeth when she campaigned extensively across the country during her husband’s presidential and vice-presidential campaigns. The day after the general election in 2004, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. Her doctors believe her treatment went extremely well and the prognosis continues to be very positive. At every step, she has proved that she is a fighter and that she will beat breast cancer. John and Elizabeth have had four children, including their eldest daughter, Catharine, who lives in New York; seven-year-old Emma Claire, and a five-year-old son, Jack. Their first child, Wade, died in 1996.
Ellery Roberts Biddle is the director of Global Voices Advocacy, an international citizen media project promoting free speech online. She is an expert on digital culture in Cuba and a current fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society.
Emily has been on all sides of the funding conversation — as a company founder, a coach to startups, and now a funder herself as Managing Director of Reboot Democracy. In the wake of the 2016 election, Reboot Democracy was created to bring innovators in technology and politics together to spur the development of tools that will revolutionize our democratic system.
In addition to her political activism, Emily is also CEO and founder of Keyrious, a luxury wearable tech startup with a focus on experiential gifting.
Emily served as a design thinking and lean coach/mentor for the Citrix Innovators Program at the Citrix Startup Accelerator, and holds degrees in Neuroscience and Musical Theatre from USC. She graduated from The MMM Program at Northwestern University in 2013 with a Masters of Engineering from the McCormick School of Engineering, an MBA from The Kellogg School of Management, and a certificate in Design Thinking & Innovation from the Segal Design Institute.