Personal Democracy Forum

Ian Murphy is the editor of The BEAST (buffalobeast.com), a half-satirical news and opinion website dedicated to militant rationalism and quasi-journalistic hijinks, which was founded in 2002 as a Buffalo, NY biweekly rag by Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi. Murphy is best known for prank calling Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker wherein he posed as arch-libertarian moneybags David Koch. He’s also infiltrated the grand opening of Ken Ham’s Creation “Museum” by posing as a Christian reporter afflicted with “Asperger’s Syndrome by proxy,” gone undercover in the Church of Scientology while on hallucinogens, canoed to Canada to expose ineffective and profit-driven post-9/11 border security, and proudly received hundreds of death threats. In the spring of 2011, Murphy ran as the Green Party candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives to fill the seat vacated by disgraced “Craigslist Congressman” Chris Lee. While reaping a pathetic one percent of the vote, Murphy nonetheless scored a comedic victory, and national press, for creating a scathing parody of his Republican opponent’s website. Murphy has also been published by Alternet, Crooks & Liars, The Daily Beast, Free Inquiry, and The Progressive. And as of this writing, Murphy is standing trial for “disruption of a religious service” with a dildo. In reality, he was arrested for filming a police officer while covering a National Organization for Marriage anti-gay marriage rally. So if he doesn’t show up, he’s probably in jail.

Ibrahim has expertise in the public, private, and civic sectors focusing sustainability, technology, community engagement, sports, and new media. He has served as a sustainability policy adviser to Mayor Bloomberg and currently serves as the Director of Community Affairs at the NYC Department of Environmental Protection. In 2015 Ibrahim joined the board of the Seattle based Living Future Institute. Part environmentalist and part community organizer, he is a former Outward Bound instructor, helped found the Brooklyn Academy for Science and the Environment, and blended youth organizing and technology while at the Movement Strategy Center in Oakland, CA. Ibrahim has appeared on various media outlets including Al Jazeera, FOX News and ABC News, and his writings can be found in many publications including The Washington Post, CNN.com, the Muslim Observer, Thought Catalog.com, PCMag.com, and more. His book, Green Deen: What Islam Teaches About Protecting the Planet explores how faith and environmentalism intersect. He holds numerous awards including the National Urban Fellow (2008), Green for All Fellow (2009), and most recently was named one of the 40 Under 40 Rising Stars in New York City Politics from City & State Magazine (2015). Abdul-Matin holds a BA from the University of Rhode Island and a MPA from CUNY (City University of New York) Baruch College. He lives in New York City with his wife and three sons.

Dr. Igor Lyubashenko is a political consultant, academic teacher, new media enthusiast and international relations analyst. He has a PhD in Political Science from the Maria Curie-Sklodowska University in Lublin (2010).

From 2007 to 2011 he was a project specialist at the PAUCI Foundation. From 2011 to 2013 he was an analyst at the Polish Institute of International Affairs.

Currently he is a lecturer at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities (SWPS) and Vistula University in Warsaw. He’s also Contributing Editor at the “New Eastern Europe” quarterly. Since February 2014 he’s been an assistant to MEP Paweł Zalewski, focusing on the situation in Ukraine.

For more than 7 years, Iryna has worked at Civil Network OPORA in Lviv, Ukraine, an NGO that’s part of the OPORA network. OPORA’s mission is to enhance public participation in the political process by using models of citizens’ influence to impact activities of state and local government.

OPORA is mostly known as a watch-dog network for Ukraine’s election process. Since 2007, the Network has implemented three national (involving up to 3,500 observers) and eight local election monitoring campaigns. Due to the rich experience and innovative approaches of OPORA activists, its observation results are highly trusted and enjoy respect among different stake-holders.

Iryna as a team member was involved in the planning and conduct of observation campaigns, especially designing communication strategies, disseminating and promoting observation results on both regional and national levels.

Iwona Kaliszewska is Assistant Professor at the Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Warsaw. She has carried out fieldwork in Dagestan and Chechnya which resulted in a book ‘Matrioshka in Hijab’, co-authored by Maciej Falkowski. She specializes in political anthropology and Caucasus area studies.

J. Matthew Williams is Director of Communication for Diversity and Inclusion at Wake Forest University. Williams’ prior work as a marketing and communications professional includes positions at two top-ranked public relations firms where he developed campaigns for nonprofits, government agencies, and Fortune 500 companies to advance civic and social justice issues. His work has been nationally recognized by the Public Relations Society of America, National Public Radio, Rhetoric Society of America, and at other industry events. He earned a Bachelor of Arts from Wake Forest and currently is completing his Master of Arts in Communication from Wake. His research focuses on how community organizers are using social media to challenge anti-black racism and sexism.

Jackie Mahendra, spearheads a network initiative at CEL to strengthen the ecosystem of tech-savvy groups pushing for progressive change. Jackie recently served as Director of Organizing and then Director of Storytelling at Change.org. Prior to that, she led online strategy for the immigration reform advocacy group America’s Voice, where she fought tooth and nail for the federal DREAM Act. As a board member of Netroots Nation, Jackie has given dozens of talks on new media strategy, immigration, and online storytelling – and spearheaded programs to promote diversity and innovation. When not building things at CEL, Jackie enjoys writing, practicing yoga, and running a fair-trade, ethical fashion startup, @ishivest.

Jaclyn Friedman is a writer, educator, and activist. She is the editor of the hit book Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and a World Without Rape (one of Publisher’s Weekly’s Top 100 Books of 2009) and author of What You Really Really Want: The Smart Girl’s Shame-Free Guide to Sex & Safety. Friedman is a founder and the Executive Director of Women, Action & the Media, a national organization working for gender justice in media. She is also a charter member of CounterQuo, a coalition dedicated to challenging the ways we respond to sexual violence. Friedman hosts the weekly podcast Fucking While Feminist.

Jacob Schonberg is a Product Manager on Google’s Civic Engagement team, which aims to increase informed engagement in democracy in countries across the globe. Previously, Jacob worked at Etsy, where he helped improve user experience and growth, leading to a redesign of the homepage and email outreach strategy. Jacob got his start developing products and improving systems while working with Google AdWords, Ads Quality, and Google Earth and Satellite Imagery teams. Jacob has a B.S.E. in Computer Science from the University of Michigan.

Over the last decade, Jake has been generally obsessed with solving critical social problems at scale – though no problem more so than making citizens’ voices have real impact in executive offices and the halls of government.

Today, Jake leads the External Affairs team at Change.org with the aim to remake the relationship between decision-makers (e.g. government or corporate leaders) and the 60 million Change.org users around the world impacted by their decisions. It’s time for advocacy to allow citizens to work with decision makers, not just at them.

Jake also serves as co-founder and board chair of Define American with Jose Antonio Vargas, where their work has included reframing the narrative of the American immigration debate in media and culture – including the cover of TIME magazine and the recently released CNN Films documentary “Documented.” Some of his other work has included leading the engagement division of the Sunlight Foundation, launching a first-of-its-kind White House initiative on Veteran employment with Code for America, helping create US Ignite – a national “gigabit” initiative to transform healthcare, education, transportation and more through next-generation Internet applications – and designing the national Civic Data Challenge, helping bring critical “civic health” data to civic decision-makers in ways they can actually use it.

Outside the office, Jake is a competitive triathlete, a widely published photographer, and serves in a variety of advisory and board roles with organizations building healthier democracy.

Jakub builds communities. He formerly did it for British and German startups. Then he started to create community around Sourcefabric, an open source software producer for professional media.

Jakub is also a journalist. As a media consultant, in the past three years he’s helped various media outlets in Georgia (tspress.ge, liberali.ge, netgazeti.ge, and seven others), Turkey (taraf.com.tr) and West Africa (wacsi.org). He teaches new media and blogging, and was named one of the most influential bloggers in Poland in 2012.

As Operations Director at ePF, he combines those skills to make ePF and its services trustworthy, transparent and community driven.

He always puts citizens first.

James Cowie is the Chief Technology Officer and head of R&D at Renesys Corporation. His research focuses on the structure and dynamics of regional Internet ecosystems, the interaction of regulation and competition in emerging Internet transit markets, and the derivation of Internet stability and diversity metrics. Jim received his B.S in computer science from Yale University, and lives in Hanover, New Hampshire.