Personal Democracy Forum

Konstantinos Pappas is the Spokesperson for the Permanent Representation of Greece towards the European Union in Brussels, who found it necessary for his position and the unfolding European crisis, to take up social media to reach more citizens in the last year and has been loving it ever since. He has been the Spokesperson for the Representation in Brussels for three years, prior to this he was the Press Attache to the Embassy of Greece in Madrid, Spain for four years, three years before this the Press Councilor at the Embassy of Greece in Cairo and had started his diplomatic career with nine years as the Press Attache to the Embassy of Greece in Paris, France. He has degrees from the University Centre of Studies on the European Communities in Paris as well as a Taxation Law Bachelors from the University of Clermont Ferrand I and an Economic Sciences Bachelor from the Aristoteleion University of Thessaloniki in Greece.

Kristen Soltis Anderson is a pollster and author of The Selfie Vote: Where Millennials Are Leading America (And How Republicans Can Keep Up). She is co-founder of Echelon Insights and is a columnist for The Washington Examiner. During the fall of 2014, she was a Resident Fellow at Harvard University’s Institute of Politics. Previously, she served as Vice President of The Winston Group, a Republican polling firm in DC. In 2013, she was named one of TIME Magazine’s “30 under 30 Changing the World,” Marie Claire’s “New Guard“ of fifty rising female leaders, one of Campaigns & Elections’ “The Influencers 50” as one of the campaign “disruptors” to watch, and as one of National Journal Magazine’s “25 Most Influential Women Under 35 in Washington.” Anderson frequently appears programs such as NBC’s “Meet the Press,” CNN’s “State of the Union,” ABC’s “This Week,” Fox News’ “The Kelly File,” and HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher.” She has written about elections and trends in public opinion for The Daily Beast, POLITICO, U.S. News and World Report, Huffington Post Pollster Campaigns & Elections magazine, National Review Online’s “The Corner,” NewYorkTimes.com’s “Room for Debate,” and The Orlando Sentinel.

Krzysztof Izdebski is a lawyer providing legal consultations on access to public information and re-use of public sector information, drafting legal opinions and representing the Citizens Network – Watchdog Poland and its clients, in court proceedings. He has been working in one of the Network’s key programmes -The Non-Governmental Centre on Access to Public Information since 2007.

He is also engage in projects concerning legal aspects of civic participation. He has been recently involved in the Stefan Batory Foundation project that aimed to allow citizen legislative initiative be present on the local governmental level. He is also a member of the Civic Legislative Forum, the informal body that act towards the more transparent and participative legislative process on the governmental level. He also deals with anti-corruption issues. He is a local researcher in Poland for European Commission report on corruption in EU.

He is a passionate data collector and gets angry when the access is denied.

Krzysztof Madejski is fulfilling his activist passions working at Foundation ePaństwo and being a board member of Stowarzyszenie Miasto Moje A W Nim.

After graduating from Warsaw University of Technology’s “Elka” Faculty he worked as a developer on a number of topics including medical data visualizations, GIS systems, SOA integration and web-based startups. He has co-built logistics platform standing behind the scenes of the Nowe Horyzonty Edukacji Filmowej film education project reaching school pupils in sixty polish cities.

At ePaństwo Krzysztof is responsible for developers gathered in Koduj Dla Polski community (Code For Poland).

A certified media junkie, Latoya Peterson provides a hip-hop feminist and anti-racist view on pop culture with a special focus on video games, film, television, and music.

One of Forbes Magazine’s 30 Under 30 rising stars in media for 2013, she is best known for the award winning blog Racialicious.com – the intersection of race and pop culture. She is currently the Senior Digital Producer for The Stream, a social media driven news show on Al Jazeera America. Previously, she was a John S. Knight Journalism 2012-2013 Fellow at Stanford University focusing on mobile technology and digital access.

Her work has been published in Essence, Spin, Vibe, Marie Claire, The American Prospect, The Atlantic Blog, Bitch Magazine, Clutch Magazine, the Women’s Review of Books, Slate’s Double X, The Poynter Institute, The Root.com and the Guardian. She was a contributor to Jezebel.com. Her essay, “The Not Rape Epidemic” was published in the anthology Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and a World Without Rape (Seal Press, 2008). She also contributed “The Feminist Existential Crisis (Dark Children Remix)” to the anthology Feminism for Real: Deconstructing the Academic Industrial Complex of Feminism (CCPA, 2011).

As a digital media consultant, Latoya Peterson has worked with brands like NPR, Wikipedia, and Weber-Shandwick to provide demographic analysis, ideas on improving user experience, and specialized outreach. She was also a guest host for WEAA’s Michael Eric Dyson Show and a contributor/substitute digital producer for Al-Jazeera International’s version of The Stream.

She was also a Harvard Berkman Center Affiliate, a Poynter Institute Sensemaking Fellow, and one of the inaugural Public Media Corps fellows.

Dr. Laura DeNardis is a professor of Communication Studies at American University in Washington, DC. She is a globally recognized Internet governance scholar whose research addresses Internet policy and technical design issues related to innovation and freedom of expression online. Her books include Opening Standards: The Global Politics of Interoperability (MIT Press 2011); Protocol Politics: The Globalization of Internet Governance (MIT Press 2009); Information Technology in Theory (Thompson 2007 with Pelin Aksoy); and a forthcoming Yale University Press book on Global Internet Governance. She is an affiliated Fellow of the Yale Information Society Project and the Vice Chair of the Global Internet Governance Academic Network (GigaNet). DeNardis earned a PhD in Science and Technology Studies from Virginia Tech, an MEng from Cornell University, an AB in Engineering Science from Dartmouth College, and was awarded a postdoctoral fellowship from Yale Law School.

Laura Olin is a veteran digital campaigner who ran social media strategy for Obama 2012 and helped set the editorial voice for the campaign’s digital communications.

Laura’s social media team ran everything from the @BarackObama Twitter account to the Joe Biden Facebook page and the Barack Obama Tumblr. They grew the campaign’s social media followings by 40 million; raised millions of dollars over social media; pioneered the use of Tumblr, Instagram, Spotify, and Pinterest for presidential campaigns; and created the most-retweeted and most-liked Twitter and Facebook posts in both networks’ history.

Prior to joining the Obama campaign as its first digital staffer in April of 2011, Laura got her online campaigning chops at Blue State Digital, People For the American Way, and the Center for American Progress. She has degrees in political science from the University of Virginia and the London School of Economics.

A native of Finland, she became an American citizen in 2008. Her first vote was for Barack Obama.

Laurenellen McCann is an organizer, artist, and tech policy expert dedicated to equitable stewardship and activation of public commons.

Currently, she works to refocus the innovation sector on the “civic” in “civic tech” as a fellow at the Open Technology Institute at New America and a consultant with the Smart Chicago Collaborative. Laurenellen writes and speaks often on public engagement strategies and co-design, including best practices for building social impact tools “with, not for” the communities they’re intended to serve. She also sits on the Advisory Board of the DC Funk Parade and runs offbeat experiments in public participation (sometimes with dinosaurs) through her culture lab, The Curious Citizens Project.

In a past life, Laurenellen was the founding National Policy Manager of the Sunlight Foundation. In addition to leading Sunlight’s work on state and local issues, she co-authored Sunlight’s open data policy platform, helped dozens of cities, counties, and states write their first open data policies, and directed the one of the largest annual #opengov community gatherings in the world, TransparencyCamp. She cut her teeth as a journalist and producer with NPR and affiliate stations and as a youth member of her hometown school board. At the end of 2013, TIME Magazine named her one of 30 People Under 30 Changing the World.

Laurie Segall is a tech reporter for CNNMoney, covering the latest on social media, startups and breaking news in the tech world. She joined the CNNMoney team as a multimedia reporter, producing television and web content.

Before joining CNNMoney, she worked at CNN’s breaking news desk. In the fast-paced world of news, she covered everything from Bernard Madoff’s ponzi scheme to the financial crisis and the 2008 presidential election. She later joined the business team, producing both domestic and international segments before stepping in front of the camera to cover technology.

In late 2009, Laurie turned her attention to the technology realm, interviewing key figures as their businesses started gaining traction. Laurie’s nontraditional interviews include everything from a chat with Biz Stone in New York City’s East Village to coffee with Square founder Jack Dorsey and a panel discussion with the Grateful Dead’s Bob Weir. She’s got an eye for discovering innovative companies and bringing their stories to the public. She was one of the first to interview Twitter’s now CEO Dick Costolo when he joined the company and she’d chatted with Foursquare’s founders before many had heard of the check-in crew.

When she’s not interviewing tech luminaries and featuring innovative tech on CNNMoney, Laurie is covering the economy and looking for ways to push the envelope. A reporter, producer, and writer, she’s always looking for a good story.

Lawrence Grodeska is a creator, communicator, connector and futurist dedicated to the well-being of all crew members on Spaceship Earth. He is the founder of CivicMakers, an innovation studio using human-centered design and lean principles to solve pressing public challenges.

Lawrence helps citizens, communities, businesses and governments listen to and collaborate effectively with each other. He released the government of San Francisco‘s first mobile app based on open data, built the B2B content marketing program at Change.org, and launched Accela’s Contractor Central app to facilitate municipal licensing and permitting. He has hosted 20+ civic networking events and spoken at SXSW Interactive, SXSW Eco, Nonprofit Technology Conference, and Code for America Summit.

Lawrence lives in San Francisco, where he composts compulsively and writes happy-go-lucky songs about bicycles, numbers and unicorns.

Lea is the Director of Network Coordination for the Moving Maryland Forward Network. A former deputy director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland and program director for the Association of Baltimore Area Grantmakers, in addition Gilmore has testified before local, state and federal commissions on issues ranging from immigration laws to the civil rights and liberties of women of color. Appointed by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, she served for several years as a member of the Maryland Advisory Board to the United States Commission on Civil Rights.

Lea has been recognized as one of 25 women shaping the world by ESSENCE Magazine, one the Top 100 Women by The Daily Record for 2014, and 2013 Advocate of the Year by the Maryland Consumer Rights Coalition.

Leslie Harris is the President & CEO of the Center for Democracy & Technology (www.cdt.org), which works to keep the Internet open, innovative and free.

Ms. Harris has defended the open Internet since its earliest days, from the fight over the Communications Decency Act to the recent campaigns against SOPA and CISPA. She was twice named one of Washington’s “Tech Titans” by Washingtonian Magazine. She has also been selected as Fast Company’s “Most Influential Women in Technology” and as the Huffington Post’s “10 Female Tech CEOs to Watch.”

Prior to joining CDT, Ms. Harris was the founder and president of a mission- driven government affairs firm that aimed to strengthen the voice of civil society in emerging policy debates on new technology and the Internet. Earlier, Ms. Harris served as Chief Legislative Counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union and was also in private law practice in Washington, DC.

Ms. Harris received her law degree cum laude from the Georgetown University Law Center and her BA at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she graduated Phi Beta Kappa. She is a senior fellow at the University of Colorado’s Silicon Flatiron Center for Law, Technology and Entrepreneurship.