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.
Josh Koster is the Managing Partner of Chong and Koster, a DC based digital advertising agency that works with progressive clients and responsible brands. He was one of the early pioneers of online voter persuasion, publishing some of the first case studies and winning the first statewide election using online advertising as the primary form of voter persuasion. He also has deep direct-response experience having driven millions of email opt ins, millions of social media opt-ins, millions of dollars in purchase and donation revenue. He has coordinated dozens of PR stunt buys and has experience with traditional media as well as non-paid digital strategies.
Josh Levy is Advocacy Director at Access. He’s worked for years at the intersections of technology, politics and activism. He was previously Campaign Director at Free Press, the U.S.-based nonprofit, where he fought to protect the open internet and stop government surveillance. He was also Managing Editor of Change.org, the global petition platform, and Associate Editor at Personal Democracy Media. He holds a BA in English and Religion from the University of Vermont and an MFA in Integrated Media Arts from Hunter College in New York. He lives with his family in Northampton, Massachusetts.
Josh Lucido is the Director of Investments (NYC) for Matter Ventures. Matter is an SF & NYC-based startup accelerator and venture capital firm grounded in the principles of design thinking that supports early-stage entrepreneurs and mission-aligned media institutions building scalable ventures that make society more informed, inclusive, and empathetic. A New York City native, Josh joins Matter from Beautycon Media, a global community for content creators, where he was Director of Finance and Operations. He has a background in financial diligence, strategic negotiations, and startup operations. He has mentored entrepreneurs in the VR and entertainment/fintech spaces, and worked on business strategy with a mobile health startup in Kenya. Josh began his career in production for ABC News and the Directors Guild of America. He holds an MBA from MIT and an undergraduate degree from Vassar College.
Joshua Micah Marshall is a contributing writer for The Washington Monthly and a columnist for The Hill. His articles on politics, culture and foreign affairs have appeared in numerous magazines and newspapers such as The American Prospect, The Atlantic Monthly, The Boston Globe, The Financial Times, Foreign Affairs, The Los Angeles Times, The New Republic, The New Yorker, The New York Post, The New York Times, Salon and Slate. Josh has appeared on CNN, CNBC, C-SPAN, FOX and MSNBC and is a frequent guest on radio stations across the country. He graduated from Princeton in 1991 and holds a doctorate in American history from Brown.
[2006] Joshua Micah Marshall is the publisher of Talking Points Memo, TPMCafe, and TPMmuckraker.com. He also writes a weekly column for the Capitol Hill newspaper The Hill.His articles on politics, culture and foreign affairs have appeared in numerous magazines and newspapers such as The American Prospect, The Atlantic Monthly, The Boston Globe, The Financial Times, Foreign Affairs, The Los Angeles Times, The New Republic, The New Yorker, The New York Post, The New York Times, Salon and Slate.
He has appeared on CNN, CNBC, C-SPAN, FOX and MSNBC and is a frequent guest on radio stations across the country. Marshall graduated from Princeton in 1991 and holds a doctorate in American history from Brown. He lives in New York City with his wife Millet and their dog Simon.
Juan Melli is a Ph.D. candidate in mechanical engineering at Princeton University. A local activist in Princeton, he led his county’s Democracy for America group and helped organize the Filibuster Frist protest at Princeton University. In September of 2005, Juan started bluejersey.net – a statewide blog for New Jersey progressives with more than a dozen front page contributors from around the state. In its six months of existence, Blue Jersey has already had 100,000 unique visitors, and is the largest progressive blog in the state. It is cemented as a landing point for activists, elected officials, political insiders, media figures and even some of its very own trolls. The Blue Jersey podcast has featured guests such as Senator Bob Menendez, Congressmen Rush Holt, Frank Pallone and Steve Rothman.
Juan M. Proaño is co-founder and president of Plus Three, a software technology provider serving political clients including the Democratic National Committee, Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, John Kerry for President and the AFL-CIO. Juan has developed strategic and technological solutions for the financial, publishing, telecommunications and pharmaceuticals industries including solutions for Capital One, Barclays Global Investments, MCI WorldCom, AT&T, Glaxo Smith Kline, The Washington Post, IBM, World Wildlife Fund, Disney, Time, Newsweek, Planned Parenthood, Green Peace, Ocean Conservancy and The National Resource Defense Fund.
[2006] Juan M. Proaño is co-founder and President of Plus Three, which was formed in 2001 to improve the way progressive organizations build constituent groups and fundraise by giving them immediate access to the widest array of contributors, while reducing the cost of each dollar raised. During the last 10 years Juan has developed a level of expertise in the areas of product development, strategic marketing and software integration that have produced industry leading technologies and best practices in the fields of database marketing, email delivery technologies and one-to-one communications tactics for GOTV and fundraising efforts. In addition, he has guided the growth ofPlus Three, most recently leading the acquisition of the PIRT group from Primedia.
Juan’s extensive work with Plus Three customers the Democratic National Committee (DNC), Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, John Kerry for President and the NAACP has established him as an expert in online fundraising, constituency management and the political landscape. His leadership was instrumental to the creation of the DNC Demzilla database that enabled the Democrats to raise more than $85 million online in 2004 and surpass the Republican National Committee’s fundraising efforts for the first time. Juan frequently provides leadership training, sharing his expertise in using technology in elections at national events, such as the
Democratic National Convention, Democratic GAIN and the DNC Latino Leadership Conference. He also provides political and technology commentary and has appeared in national publications including the National Journal, Newsweek and TIME.
In 2005, Juan was named one of the Top 100 Hispanic Entrepreneurs by Hispanic Trends magazine and was named to the board of directors for the National Equity Center, a non-partisan organization established to promote diversity and democratic values by cultivating, training, and empowering a
generation of citizens with the leadership, community organizing, academic, research, and advocacy skills necessary to eliminate existing local and national civil rights and social justice disparities.
Juanita León es la fundadora y directora de lasillavacia.com, el portal político más influyente en Colombia. Es abogada de la Universidad de los Andes de Bogotá, con maestría en periodismo de la Universidad de Columbia en Nueva York. Es Nieman Fellow de la Universidad de Harvard 2006 y Open Societe Fellow 2008. En 2007, fue la editora de lanzamiento de Flypmedia.com, una revista virtual en Nueva York y de Semana.com, la edición electrónica de la revisa Semana en Bogotá. Enseñó Guerrilla News en la facultad de periodismo de la Universidad de New York y actualmente dicta una cátedra sobre el futuro del periodismo en la Universidad de los Andes. Antes de sumergirse en el periodismo digital, trabajó en The Wall Street Journal, edición para las Americas, fue editora de la Unidad de Paz del periódico El Tiempo y editora de Reportajes de la revista Semana. Es autora de los libros No somos machos pero somos muchos (cinco crónicas de resistencia civil en Colombia), Manual de Cómo Hacer Periodimo y País de Plomo, crónicas de guerra, sobre el conflicto armado en Colombia, que fue galardonado en 2006 con el tercer puesto del prestigioso premio Lettre-Ulysess Award en Berlín.
Julie Germany serves as the Deputy Director of The Institute for Politics, Democracy & the Internet. She worked as a writer, editor and program manager for international initiatives in Korea, Ukraine, Haiti and the United States. Julie is a founding member of Young Champions, a non-profit that works with youth health issues.
She served as the principal author and editor of the Institute’s The Politics-to-Go Handbook: A Guide to Using Mobile Technology in Politics and The Political Consultants’ Online Fundraising Primer, and co-authored Putting Online Influentials to Work for Your Campaign and Under the Radar and Over the Top: Online Political Web Videos in the 2004 Campaign. Julie has been interviewed by local, national and international media, including Fox News, New York Times, Washington Post, ABC (Spain), Le Monde, CNet and UPI.
She is a graduate of Messiah College, where she studied at Keble College, Oxford University and in Edinburgh, Scotland. She was a Pew Younger Scholar of Literature at the University of Notre Dame. She received an M.A. from The George Washington University, where she was a University Fellow.
Justin Brookman is the Director, Consumer Privacy and Technology Policy, for Consumers Union, the policy and advocacy arm of Consumer Reports. In this new privacy role at CR, he will help the organization continue its groundbreaking work to shape the digital marketplace in a way that empowers consumers and puts their data privacy and security needs first. This work includes using CR research to identify critical gaps in consumer privacy, data security, and technology law and policy, as well as building strategies to expand the use and influence of the new Digital Standard being developed by CR and partner organizations to evaluate the privacy and security of products and services.
Prior to joining Consumers Union, Brookman was Policy Director of the Federal Trade Commission’s Office of Technology Research and Investigation. At the FTC, Brookman conducted and published original research on consumer protection issues raised by emerging technologies such as cross-device tracking, smartphone security, and the Internet of Things. He also helped initiate and investigate enforcement actions against deceptive or unfair practices, including actions against online data brokers and digital tracking companies.
He previously served as Director of Consumer Privacy at the Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT), a digital rights nonprofit, where he coordinated CDT’s advocacy for stronger protections for personal information in the United States and Europe.
Brookman also served as an Assistant Attorney General and, later, Chief of the Internet Bureau in the New York Attorney General’s office, where he brought consumer protection actions on a wide range of issues, including privacy, free speech, data security, and net neutrality. He began his career as a litigation associate at Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson LLP. He received his J.D. from the New York University School of Law and his B.A. from the University of Virginia.
Justin Germany is an Account Executive at Campaign Solutions where he specializes in web video. In his tenure at Campaign Solutions Germany has shot, edited and produced web videos for Lynn Swann for Governor, Governor Matt Blunt, Straight Talk America and Jerry Kilgore for Governor among others.
Germany joined Campaign Solutions after serving as the videographer and editor for the Bush-Cheney eCampaign. His work served as a nexus between digital documentary and political message that showcased the President on the campaign trail.
That work resulted in over twenty videos seen by more than a million people on the Bush-Cheney ’04 website. The New York Times took note of Germany’s editing and shooting style describing a movie he filmed and edited for the President’s rallies as, “the video stands out…edgy, unpresidential style, with grainy pictures, speeded-up-action and off kilter camera angles shouting out “You got a problem with this?” to anyone under 25.” Footage he shot was also used for TV ads and convention videos, additionally he won two Pollie awards and a Golden Dot for videos he shot and edited for the campaign.
Germany graduated with a Bachelors of Arts in Mass Communication from Louisiana State University in 2002 and a Masters of Arts in Political Management from the George Washington University in 2003.
Justin Oberman is a new media viral communication consultant and founded of Digitisms for that purpose. He specializes in consulting with corporations, non-profits, political campaigns or movements and individuals to effectively harness the power of the blogosphere as well as establish and maintain the important task of blogger relations. He has been doing that for the past two-and-a-half years. His clients have ranged from large corporations such as AOL and Lucent Technologies, individual bloggers with great ideas like Whatwoulddumbledoredo.com and social networking startups like Queen-Bees.com
Justin’s recent specialty and long time passion, however, is mobile technology of which he also consults the above institutions on (it is a new media) as well as writes about it at his popular mobile technology weblog Mopocket.com. Known as a mobile maven of sorts, you can also read Justin at MobileACtive an organization dedicated to the use of mobile technology for social activism of which he is an original member and at the Personal Democracy Forum where he is the Mobile Technology and Politics Correspondent and Associate Editor.
Justin lives in New York City where in his spare time he is also a high school policy debate coach. He has a BA from Brandeis University, a Masters Degree in Philosophy from the Graduate Faculty at the New School and 2-3 start up ideas written on napkins in his back pocket. For more information or to get in touch with Justin simply send the text message “joberman” to Mozes (66937).