Speaker Database

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.

Ana Marie Cox

Anand Kulkarni

Anand is an entrepreneur and researcher on topics human computation and online crowdsourcing platforms. His most recent role is cofounder of LeadGenius, a Silicon Valley social enterprise that’s a founding signatory of the Good Work Code. Anand was named to Forbes “30 under 30” list. In a previous life, Anand was a NSF graduate research fellow at UC Berkeley.

Andre Banks

Andre Banks has spent most of the last decade harnessing the power of both storytelling and technology to build innovative social movements in the US and around the world. He is the co-founder and Executive Director of All Out (www.allout.org), which mobilizes millions of people to create a world where no person will have to sacrifice their family or freedom, safety or dignity because of who they are or who they love. Andre is also the Senior Advisor at Purpose (www.purpose.com), where he was formerly Partner and Director of Strategy. While leading strategy development on global movements to fight cancer and eliminate nuclear weapons, Andre also incubated All Out. His background in organizing (AFL-CIO and Africa Action), media and public affairs (Applied Research Center), and in publishing (ColorLines Magazine) informs his work. All Out’s 1.9 million members, an unprecedented alliance of LGBT people and allies, inspire his work and his worldview.

Andrea Chalupa

Andrea Chalupa is a journalist, author, and community organizer. Her work has appeared in TIME, The Daily Beast, and The Atlantic. Her first screenplay Man Made—the story of George Orwell struggling to publish Animal Farm, the book that made him famous—was a Sundance finalist optioned to Lars von Trier’s Academy Award-winning Zentropa Productions. In January 2014, when the mainstream media was more concerned with Justin Bieber’s arrest in Miami than covering police violence against protesters in Ukraine, Andrea launched #DigitalMaidan, a social media movement that made Ukraine trend globally within minutes and for the very first time; the movement grew into an international crowdsourcing network that fact-checks and exposes Kremlin propaganda. An expert on social media, civic activism, Ukraine and Russia, Andrea has spoken in the Council of Europe, the National Press Club in Washington, DC, and leading universities in the US and Canada. She is the author of Orwell and The Refugees: The Untold Story of Animal Farm.

Andres Monroy-Hernandez

Andrés Monroy-Hernández is a researcher at Microsoft Research, and an affiliate faculty at the University of Washington. His work focuses on the design and study of social computing systems. Andrés was named one of the TR35 Innovators by the MIT Technology Review in Spanish, and one of CNET’s influential Latinos in Tech. His research has received best paper awards at several computing conferences, recognized at Ars Electronica, and featured in The New York Times, The Guardian, NPR, and Wired. Andrés holds a Ph.D. from the MIT Media Lab, where he created the Scratch Online Community.

Andrew Boyd

A pioneer of viral activism, Andrew was one of the driving forces behind Billionaires for Bush and the Million Billionaire March. He founded, and for several years directed, the arts and action program at United for a Fair Economy. His writing has appeared in the Nation, the Village Voice and several anthologies on recent social movements. Andrew is the author of The Activist Cookbook, a source book on creative direct action, as well as two ironically serious (or is it seriously ironic?) books published by W. W. Norton: Daily Afflictions and Life’s Little Deconstruction Book. Last year he was chief “idea girbil” at Working Assets. This year he’s wholesaling hazmat suits: www.quarantinewalmart.com

Andrew Foxwell

Andrew Golis

Andrew Golis is the founder and CEO of This., a home for the best of the web where users can share just 1 link a day. Previously, Andrew was Entrepreneur-in-Residence at The Atlantic, the Director of Digital and a Senior Editor at FRONTLINE, and an editor at Yahoo! News and TalkingPointsMemo.

Andrew has led teams to 3 Online Journalism Awards, a half dozen Webby honors, 2 Emmy nominations and an Overseas Press Club Award. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife, feminist writer and activist Jessica Valenti, and their daughter and dog.

Andrew Hoppin

Andrew Hoppin is co-founder and CEO of New Amsterdam Ideas (Nuams). He previously served as Chief Information Officer of the New York State Senate from January 2009-January 2011. There, he led the successful effort to deploy the first major New York State government website using the Drupal content management system, NYSenate.gov, which won “Best of New York” awards for Project Excellence. Andrew was awarded the 2010 New York State Public Sector CIO of the Year by GovTech Magazine, and was named one of the top 50 government CIOs in the United States by Information Week magazine. Andrew’s experience with Drupal dates back to 2005, when he served as Strategy Director for the CivicSpace Labs project, one of the first major Drupal consulting firms. Later, as co-founder of the startup company Goodstorm, he invested in the development of some of Drupal’s earliest e-commerce capabilities. Finally, as co-founder of the CoLab project at NASA, he invested in the development of the first version of Drupal’s “Conference Organizing solution.” Andrew keynoted the 3,000 person 2010 Drupalcon conference in San Francisco. He serves on the Board of Directors or Advisory Boards of Open Plans, Civic Commons (now Code for America), OpenCongress, and Yenza.

Andrew Keen

Andrew Keen is an Internet entrepreneur who founded Audiocafe.com in 1995 and built it into a popular first generation Internet company. He is currently the host of “Keen On” show, the popular Techcrunch chat show, a columnist for CNN and a regular commentator for many other newspapers, radio and television networks around the world. He is also an acclaimed speaker, regularly addressing the impact of digital technologies on 21st century business, education and society. He is the author of the 2007 international hit “CULT OF THE AMATEUR: How The Internet Is Killing Our Culture” which has been published in 17 different languages. Andrew’s latest book “DIGITAL VERTIGO: How Today’s Social Revolution Is Dividing, Diminishing and Disorienting Us” will be published on May 22, 2012.

Andrew Konya

Andrew Konya, CEO/Founder of Remesh, Inc., is a PhD student in computational/theoretical physics at Kent State University. With extensive experience developing and implementing mathematical models for natural and man-made systems, Andrew brings a creative and versatile technical toolbox. This expertise, in concert with his passion for linguistics, led him to develop a mathematical framework for collective speech. His goal is the completion of a conversation platform, built on this framework, which can make conversations between countries in conflict a viable alternative to war.

Andrew Lewman

Andrew Lewman is the Executive Director of The Tor Project, a non-profit organization providing research and free software that protects your online privacy and anonymity. Lewman manages The Tor Project’s business operations, customer support, law enforcement liason, and advocacy roles while also serving on its board of directors. He’s helped Tor grow from a small group of volunteers to the thousands of volunteers and successful company with a global reach that is Tor today. He’s worked on projects with the National Science Foundation, Internews Network, Freedom House, Google, Broadcasting Board of Governors, National Network to End Domestic Violence, US Department of Defense, and the US State Department. He is a strong believer of individual rights, privacy, anonymity, and solving real-world problems – sometimes even with technology.

Andrew McLaughlin

Andrew Rasiej

Andrew Rasiej is a civic and social entrepreneur, technology strategist, and the founder of Personal Democracy Media focusing on the intersection of technology, politics, and government. In addition to co-founding Civic Hall earlier this year, he is the Chairman of the NY Tech Meetup, a 40,000+-member organization of technologists, venture funders, marketers, representing start up and more mature companies using technology to transform themselves, New York City, and the world. He is the founder of MOUSE.org which focuses on 21st century public education and senior advisor to the Sunlight Foundation a Washington DC organization using technology to make government more transparent. Andrew lives and works in New York City.

Andrew Shapiro

Andrew Singleton

Andrew Singleton is a Program Manager for the Venture Cafe Foundation. The Foundation’s goals are to empower people by democratizing the processes of innovation and entrepreneurship. His team of volunteers and staff have run Venture Cafe Thursdays, the largest weekly gathering for entrepreneurs and innovators in the world, for over six years. He supports the expansions of Venture Cafe nationally and internationally and is on Foundation teams which run two public innovation centers in Boston, District Hall Boston and the Roxbury Innovation Center. Andrew received his BS from MIT.

Andrew Slack

Andrew Turner

Andrew Weinreich

Andrii Bashtovyi

Andy Carvin

Andy Stern

Andy Stern is president of the Service Employees International Union, the nation’s largest health care union, representing more than 870,000 health care workers, including 110,000 nurses and 40,000 doctors. Stern began his union career in 1973 as a state social service worker and rank-and-file member of SEIU Local 668. He rose through the ranks to become the first elected full-time president of the local, and by 1980 was named at age 29 to the SEIU International Executive Board. Since his election to lead SEIU in April 1996, nearly 800,000 workers have united with SEIU. Stern serves on the board of directors for the AFL-CIO Housing and Building Investment Trust, the Aspen Institute, and the National Academy of Social Insurance.

Aneesh Chopra

Angela Fernandez

Angela McKay

Ms. Angela McKay is Director of Cybersecurity Policy and Strategy in the Global Security Strategy and Diplomacy (GSSD) team at Microsoft. As part of GSSD, she leverages her 15+ years of experience to address complex global challenges and drive strategic change, both within Microsoft and externally, to advance trust in the computing ecosystem. Ms. McKay leads Microsoft’s cybersecurity policy work in the U.S. She also engages internationally with industry, governments, and civil society to improve security and stability of the computing ecosystem for users around the world. Ms. McKay combines her technical expertise and public policy acumen with insights on demographic and technological trends to develop policies that support development, growth, and innovation, and advance security, privacy, confidence, and trust in the Information Age.

Ms. McKay also serves as Chair of the Information Technology (IT) Sector Coordinating Council, the public private partnership for the IT industry to work with the U.S. Government on critical infrastructure protection and cybersecurity, and Microsoft’s Point of Contact for the National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee (NSTAC), which provides the President advice and expertise to help maintain secure and resilient communications. Before returning to Washington D.C., Ms. McKay’s focus was increasing cybersecurity capacity in developing and emerging economies.

Prior to joining Microsoft in 2008, she served in several key roles at Booz Allen Hamilton supporting the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Cybersecurity and Communications for over five years. From 1999 through 2003, Ms. McKay served as an outside plant engineer for BellSouth Telecommunications, developing process and performance improvements for engineering voice and data communication services and testifying on behalf of the company before public utilities commissions. Ms. McKay holds a Bachelor’s of Industrial and Systems Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology.