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.
Jerome Armstrong, a pioneer of the political blogosphere, founded one of the first political blogs, MyDD.com, in 2001. An architect of the netroots strategy that used blogs and meetups for Howard Dean’s campaign, Jerome works as an internet strategist for advocacy organizations and political campaigns with his company, Netroots.com. He lives in Alexandria, Virginia.
Jerry Michalski is the founder and president of Sociate, a technology consulting firm. For the five years before he founded Sociate, Jerry was the managing editor of Release 1.0, Esther Dyson’s monthly newsletter, and co-host of the annual PC Forum. Previously, Jerry was an industry analyst and research service director with New Science Associates. Jerry earned an MBA from the Wharton School and a BA in Economics from UC Irvine.
In the middle of his dozen years as a tech-industry trends analyst, Jerry realized that the word “consumer” made him itchy. Paying attention to that itch for two decades turned into a series of insights that revolve around trust, particularly how “consumerization” broke our trust in humans and how disparate groups around the world are rebuilding it now. In 2010, Jerry started a think-and-do tank called REX, the Relationship Economy eXpedition, which convenes change agents to explore these ideas about trust. Long ago, Jerry was a freight rate analyst (Mobil Oil), fake hippo shooter (on the Jungle Cruise at Disneyland) and corporate strategy consultant. He was raised in South America, speaks Spanish and German fluently and publishes his Brain openly online.
Jessica is a digital storyteller. Interactive web stories are her passion.
She is the creator, writer, host and producer of Voice of America’s viral daily web show “OMG! Meiyu.” In each episode, Jessica uses Mandarin to teach American slang and culture to her young Chinese audience. With just her Apple laptop and a few props, Jessica produces “OMG” from her one bedroom apartment in Washington, D.C., and has garnered 10 million hits in just 10 months.
Jessica holds a Public Relations+Mandarin Chinese degree from Ohio University’s E.W. Scripps School of Journalism. She also attended intensive Chinese language schools at Middlebury College and Zhejiang Technology University.
Jessica hopes to broaden her cross-cultural impact with more in-depth views into the lives of young people in China and the U.S.
Jessy Tolkan is the President of Tolkan & Co., a progressive strategy firm specializing in large-scale advocacy campaigns that disrupt politics, culture, and polluting industries. With clients ranging from the Working Families Party to the Renault-Nissan Corporation, Jessy creates and executes innovative campaigns with an eye towards transformative change.
Jessy has spent most of her career working to build power in the Progressive moment, with an expertise on mobilizing the millennial generation. In 2004, as state director for the New Voters Project, Tolkan helped to register more than 130,000 young voters and produced one of the highest youth turnout rates in the country. This cutting edge research and campaigning provided the foundation for the historic youth strategies employed in the 2008 Presidential Election.
Jessy Tolkan received her B.A. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in Political Science, and is nearing completion of a joint MBA and JD at Georgetown University. In 2008, Rolling Stone Magazine named her one of the 100 agents of change in America.
VJo co-founded and directs CitizenSpeak, a non-profit that offers a free and easy-to-use email advocacy service for grassroots organizations. Described as MoveOn for the rest of us, CitizenSpeak enables civic organizations and individual activists to quickly launch powerful email advocacy campaigns to educate representatives and targeted decision-makers about their causes. Activists across the country have created accounts on CitizenSpeak raising awareness and building constituencies in their communities about issues such as education, discrimination, economic injustices and the environment. Jo brings more than 15 years of marketing experience to CitizenSpeak. As a director of marketing and sales, Jo has held critical roles in numerous international high technology public companies. She currently also co-directs In the House PR, a public relations firm that specializes in Web 2.0 communications for high tech and alternative energy companies.
Jo Miles is an independent digital strategist and co-principal at FutureShift. She has a decade of experience helping progressive non-profits translate their vision for change into online action, both in-house and as a consultant. Previously, she served as digital director at Food & Water Watch. She is also a writer of science fiction and fantasy, and her short fiction can be found in Diabolical Plots, the Agents and Spies anthology, and Galileo’s Theme Park. A certified geek, she’s been a devoted speculative fiction fan since she was a kid, and her particular passion is exploring pressing societal issues through the lens of science fiction.
