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.

Mike Turk

Michael Turk is president of Opinion Mover Strategies, a communications consulting firm in Washington, DC.

In his professional career, Turk has lived at the intersection of politics, public policy and technology – crossing from the political, to the commercial and into government. He has managed the Internet operations for three Presidential campaigns and the Republican National Committee; managed e-Government projects at the Office of Management and Budget and the Department of Energy; and worked with Grassroots Enterprise – an Internet focused public affairs firm – as a technology and activism consultant.

Most recently, Turk served as Vice President of Industry Grassroots for the National Cable & Telecommunications Association before leaving to launch his own company. Turk is passionate about telecom policy and technology developments. While at NCTA, Turk launched CableTechTalk.com – the cable industry’s blog.

Turk also writes (and rants) on his own blog at KungFuQuip. He is married and has two mostly wonderful children.

[ 2006] As Vice President of Industry Grassroots for the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, Michael Turk is working to build a robust grassroots activist base for the cable industry. Using experience gained in more than 12 years of campaign politics and Internet activism, Turk is employing traditional grassroots organizing and sophisticated web based tools to carry the cable industry’s message to Congress and state legislatures.Before joining NCTA, Turk served as the eCampaign Director at the Republican National Committee overseeing the Internet operations and online activism for the GOP. The eCampaign combined the party’s communications, activism, and financial support initiatives and delivered them online – providing an online component to every offline activity.

Prior to that, Turk was the eCampaign Director for Bush-Cheney 04 and oversaw the most sophisticated online campaign in history, marshalling the resources of 7.5 million Internet activists to communicate the President’s message and turn out the largest vote for President in generations.

Turk has lived at the intersection of politics and technology – crossing from the political, to the commercial and into government. Beginning in 1994 with the creation of one of the first state party websites on the Internet, he has served as the e-Government Portfolio Manager for Government-to-Citizen projects at the Office of Management and Budget; redeployed the Department of Energy’s internet presence at energy.gov; and worked with Grassroots Enterprise – an Internet focused public affairs firm – as a technology and activism consultant.

Mike Ward

Mike Ward is the TurboVote Program Director at Democracy Works and co-creator of the TurboVote Challenge. TurboVote is an online service to help every American vote in every election — local, state, and national, by making it easy to register, vote by mail, and get election reminders. The TurboVote Challenge is a group of companies, nonprofits, and colleges working together to achieve 80% voter turnout in 2020. Mike passionately believes that broadening and deepening voter engagement will improve everyone’s quality of life. He also recently moved into an apartment with a backyard and would love to hear your urban gardening advice.

Mike Zuckerman

Mike’s career/life is all about re-thinking industries and trends to create mass appeal and participation. Mike pushes the boundaries of shared economy models and their impact on innovative ecosystems, sustainable development and grass-roots community activation to improve civic life.

Currently he is: an affiliate Institute for the Future, Organizer for the National Day of Civic Hacking, Artist Liaison for Haiti Cummunitere in Port au Prince, Director of the Free Burma Project, Creative Director of the Urban Innovation Exchange, Community Organizer for Yerdle the free sharing site and most recently a co-founder of [ FREESPACE ]

Formerly… Mike was: Project Manager for Pacific Building and Design, worked at yahoo! and Director of Sustainability for Temple Nightclub – America’s 1st green nightclub and on the original Advisory Council for the UN backed Business Council on Climate Change, was elected Chairman of the Kyebando Green Movement in Kampala, Uganda, Creative Consultant at the Barlow a new maker retail community in Sebastopol and a Culture Hacker at Innovation Endeavors, Eric Schmidt’s VC firm. He is also an urban bee keeper and loves sailing.

Milica Kovacevic

Milica Kovacevic is the President of the Center for Democratic Transition (CDT). She has been active in civil society organizations for over a decade, and she joint CDT in 2001. Her expertise includes elections, parliamentary development, institutional capacity development, civic participation, campaigns and communications and message development and public relations for non-profits. As trainer and consultant she worked with many NGOs and civic groups in Western Balkans, Eurasia and Middle East, helping them to develop strategic goals and plans, design civic actions and campaigns, build partnerships and contact internal reforms.

Mindy Finn

Mindy Finn is the deputy director of the Republican National Committee’s eCampaign, the division responsible for fostering the Republican Party’s goals through the use of email and the Internet. Before working at the RNC, Mindy served as deputy webmaster for Bush-Cheney ’04, where she facilitated voter turnout and email programs, promoted volunteer action on GeorgeWBush.com and directed the online chat series with key surrogates and campaign staff. Mindy conducted her first big political effort online while for Congressman Lamar Smith of Texas, developing and implementing strategy for reaching diverse audiences through the Congressman’s Pollie award-honored website.

[2006] Mindy Finn is the Director of New Media & Political Technology for Santorum 2006, the re-election campaign for Sen. Rick Santorum, one of the most watched political races in the country. She directs all web-based media, niche message voter e-contact and engagement, and the use of technology for mass communications and correspondence. Finn most recently served as deputy director of the Republican National Committee’s eCampaign, the division responsible for fostering the Republican Party’s goals through the use of email and the Internet. While at the RNC, Finn played an integral role in launching the GOP’s new Web site, which features the latest tools and opportunities for every American to become involved and help spread the Party’s message. Prior to the RNC, Finn served as deputy webmaster for Bush-Cheney ’04, where she facilitated the message, voter turnout, and finance email programs, promoted volunteer action on GeorgeWBush.com and directed the online chat series with key surrogates and campaign staff, including First Lady Laura Bush and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

Mindy is well-known for her work in leveraging technology to promote democracy at the legislative, campaign and political committee level. She has been a key player in elevating the presence of the Republican Party online. Web efforts she has worked on have gone on to earn Pollie and Golden Dot awards.

Minerva Tantoco

Minerva Tantoco is New York City’s first-ever Chief Technology Officer (CTO). As CTO, Tantoco directs the Mayor’s Office of Technology and Innovation with responsibility for the development and implementation of a coordinated citywide strategy on technology and innovation and encouraging collaboration across agencies and with the wider New York City technology ecosystem.; For more than 25 years – from launching her own start-up to directing technology and innovation for large enterprises – Tantoco has worked to affect business transformation across a range of industries from advertising to finance. With her appointment to the administration of New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, she brings this wealth of experience in technology-enabled transformation to government; .

Raised in Flushing, Queens, Tantoco is a product of New York City public schools. She attended Bronx Science High School and while still in college, moved to Silicon Valley where she co-founded technology startup, Manageware Inc, which was successfully sold five years later. Since then, Ms. Tantoco has led emerging technology initiatives including artificial intelligence, e-commerce, virtualization, online marketing and mobile applications.

Ms. Tantoco holds four US patents on intelligent workflow and is a speaker and author on mobile, security, big data, and innovation. As Senior Product Manager at Palm, Tantoco pioneered mobile enterprise solutions in the early 2000s which helped pave the path in mobile technology, developing and deploying some of the world’s earliest mobile applications. As Chief Architect at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Tantoco led the re-design and implementation of the company’s Investment Banking data warehouse, a project that mirrors many of the City’s big data and analytics initiatives. Ms. Tantoco most recently served as UBS APAC CTO for client-facing technology and innovation, with regional responsibility for the Asia Pacific region.

Mischa Byruck

Mischa leads Code for America’s relationships with its corporate sponsors and partners. Previously, he was the Manager of Strategic Partnerships at DataKind, an organization harnessing the power of data science in the service of humanity. He has worked as a labor journalist, an activist and community organizer, and in international and economic development. Following Hurricane Katrina, he founded Emergency Communities, an organization that operated large-scale disaster relief camps along the Gulf Coast. He is a 2013 Coro Leader, a 2012 NYU Reynolds Scholar in Scaling Social Enterprises, a 2009 Wagner Scholar, and a 2007 Nominee for CNN Hero of the Year. He received his BA from Columbia University and his MPA from NYU.

Mishi Choudhary

Mishi Choudhary is the Executive Director of Software Freedom Law Center, India, a legal services organization based out of New Delhi that brings together lawyers, policy analysts, technologists, and students to protect freedom in the digital world. SFLC.IN promotes innovation and open access to knowledge by helping developers make great Free and Open Source Software, protect privacy and civil liberties for citizens in the digital world, educates and helps policy makers reach informed decisions on the use and adoption of technology. She is also the Legal Director Software Freedom Law Center, New York that provides pro-bono legal services to developers of Free, Libre, and Open Source Software. Mishi has a Masters degree in Law from Columbia University in the City of New York and a Bachelors in Law and Political Science from the University of Delhi.

Mitch Ratcliffe

Mitch Ratcliffe is CEO of Persuadio, a technology firm providing Web-based data collection, analysis for social and information relationship mapping. Mitch is also Co-editor of Extreme Democracy, and a longtime journalist.

Mitchell Baker

Moira Weigel

Moira Weigel is a writer and scholar, currently at the Harvard Society of Fellows, as well as a founding editor of Logic magazine. She received her PhD in Comparative Literature and Media Studies from Yale University in 2017. Her work explores how media technologies shape culture–and vice versa. She has also written extensively on the history of feminism, including in her first book Labor of Love: The Invention of Dating (FSG, 2016). Her new book considers how feminist thinking can help us understand the data economy.

Mollie Ruskin

Mollie Ruskin is an independent designer, researcher and creative technologist with a focus on civic and social justice work.

A founding member of the United States Digital Service in the Obama White House and a former Presidential Innovation Fellow, Mollie has a rich background in work aimed at improving government’s ability to deliver human-centered services for the American people. During her time in government, she led a myriad human-centered design endeavors — including an an effort to redesign how low-income Americans apply and enroll in public assistance programs, investigation to understand Veterans’ experiences with the critical VA services, and the development of a first-ever U.S. Web Design System.

Mollie now works with organizations such as Color of Change, Democracy Works and The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights to apply design approaches to a thorny movement building, advocacy and civic challenges. In 2017, Mollie authored “Voicemails to Votes,” an effort to map the human and technological systems involved in Congressional constituent correspondence in partnership the OpenGov Foundation.

Mollie sits on the board of the Alliance for Youth Action, a national network of organizations building political power of young people in the U.S and is a co-founder of Design Gigs for Good, a job board for designers looking to put their skills to work for world betterment.

Molly Turner

Molly Turner joined Airbnb in 2011 as the first employee on the Public Policy team. As an advocate for the Airbnb community Molly manages government affairs for the company, which has a presence in over 34,000 cities worldwide. She has co-founded two Sharing Economy coalitions in New York and San Francisco and is currently Chair of the Policy Committee for the Bay Area Sharing Economy Coalition. In addition to advocacy Molly manages Airbnb’s civic research initiatives and partnerships. Before Airbnb, Molly consulted with governments on sustainable tourism development and conducted research with the UNESCO World Heritage Center. She is also currently the Co-Editor of an international preservation journal. Molly holds a Master in Urban Planning from Harvard University and a BA from Dartmouth College.

Mona Eltahawy

Monica Pachon

Montserrat Nicolás

Especialista en comunicación con más de 10 años de experiencia en la creación y producción de estrategias y planes de acción. Es chilena, criada en Suecia y reside actualmente en Washington DC, EE.UU. Según dice uno de sus diplomas, es historiadora pero ahora se aboca a asesorar campañas políticas, ONGs y empresas. Analista política y columnista de diferentes medios, también es autora del libro Vicente Huidobro ¿Poeta, Político o Intelectual?, una investigación obsesiva sobre las obras tempranas de Vicente Huidobro y su periódico ACCION. DIARIO DE PURIFICACION NACIONAL (1925). Un libro que se embarca en un viaje que desmenuza la responsabilidad del Poeta y del Intelectual dentro del sistema político y cultural de Chile. Frecuentemente es entrevistada sobre el estado regional y temas relacionados con la política y el uso de nuevas tecnologías. Mantiene un blog humilde -curvaspoliticas- iniciado en 2005, actividad que la llevó ser la única sudamericana invitada a la histórica reunión del G20 en Londres (2009). Intrépida, busca que más mujeres se hagan un espacio en la discusión política en las Americas a través de los diferentes medios sociales.

Moritz Loew

Morley Winograd

Myaisha Hayes

Myaisha is the National Organizer on Criminal Justice & Technology at the Center for Media Justice. Myaisha brings several years of organizing experience with her from various national and local campaigns including President Obama’s re-election campaign, Fight for $15, and the CLOSErikers Campaign. As the grandchild of a political prisoner, she is deeply committed to organizing people power that leads to radical transformative change and justice. Myaisha earned her BA in Black Studies at Occidental College and currently lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Nabiha Syed

Nabiha Syed has been described as “one of the best emerging free speech lawyers” by Forbes magazine. She is currently the Assistant General Counsel at BuzzFeed. Prior to BuzzFeed, Nabiha helped start the emerging technology practice at Levine Sullivan Koch & Schulz, a leading First Amendment law firm, and was named the First Amendment Fellow at The New York Times.

She has worked on legal access issues at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; advocated for women’s rights in Pakistan; counseled on the publication of hacked and leaked materials; and advised documentary filmmakers through the Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program. She is the co-founder of Drone U and the Media Freedom and Information Access legal clinic at Yale Law School.

Nabiha is a graduate of Johns Hopkins University, Yale Law School and Oxford University, which she attended as a Marshall Scholar. She serves as a non-resident fellow at both Stanford Law School and Yale Law School.

Nancy Lublin

As CEO of DoSomething.org, the largest organization for teens and social change in the world, Nancy Lublin is able to name all 5 members of One Direction without a smidge of sarcasm. An expert on youth, social media, and pop culture, brands like Pepsi and Chase and several tech start-ups have sought her advice and Fast Company has named her to their Most Creative People list. In 2013, while still CEO of DoSomething.org, Lublin turned her popular TED talk into her third company, Crisis Text Line (CTL). CTL is the first 24/7, free, nationwide text line for teens. Prior to leading DoSomething.org and CTL, Nancy turned a $5,000 inheritance into Dress for Success, which helps women transition from welfare to work in more than 125 cities in 15 countries. Before leading two of the most popular charity brands in America, she was a bookworm. She studied politics at Brown University, political theory at Oxford University (as a Marshall Scholar), and has a law degree from New York University. She is the author of the best-selling business book Zilch: The Power of Zero in Business and is one of the top 50 Influencers on LinkedIN. Nancy was recently named Fortune’s “World’s 50 Greatest Leaders” alongside the Pope and Dalai Lama (We know, she thinks it’s funny too!). Nancy is a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum (attending Davos multiple times), was named Social Entrepreneur of the Year in 2014 and has been named in the NonProfit Times Power and Influence Top 50 3 times. She is married to Jason Diaz and has two children who have never tasted Chicken McNuggets.

Nancy Scola

Nancy Scola is a reporter and writer whose work focuses on the intersections of technology, politics, and government. She is a reporter for Politico, and for nearly a decade, her coverage of everything from how tech is changing the art of political campaigning to the ongoing policy debate over net neutrality has appeared in the Atlantic, the Washington Post, Reuters, Washingtonian, the American Prospect, Next City, and many other publications. She has also served as a tech policy reporter for the Washington Post, a contributing writer at the American Prospect, a columnist at Next City, a tech and politics correspondent for the Atlantic, and editor of the daily newsletter techPresident. In a previous life, she worked in the U.S. House of Representatives.”
[2006] Nancy Scola is a former staffer for the Committee on Government Reform in the U.S. of Representatives, where she covering technology policy and online communications. Before that, she developed research techniques in the non-profit sector for an organization focused on the development of urban neighborhoods. And before that, she was a grad student in anthropology. She blogs on technology, politics, culture and more at nancyscola.com. She lives in Park Slope, Brooklyn.

Nancy Watzman

Nancy Watzman is managing editor of the Political TV Ad Archive for the Internet Archive. She’s worked for the Sunlight Foundation, the Center for Responsive Politics, & the Center for Public Integrity. She co-wrote Is That a Politician in Your Pocket? Washington on $2 Million a Day (John Wiley & Sons, 2004). She has also contributed to The Buying of the Congress (Avon Books, 1998), Harper’s Magazine, The Nation, The New Republic, and The Washington Monthly.

Nanjira Sambuli

Nanjira Sambuli is a Research Manager at iHub, Nairobi, where she leads the Governance & Technology research pillar. Nanjira is trained as a mathematician with experience as a new media strategist for organizations such as UNEP, UN HABITAT, Africans Act 4 Africa, Global Power Shift, on their pan-African and international campaigns. With iHub Research, Nanjira has developed a framework for assessing the Viability, Verification, and Validity of Crowdsourcing, an online dangerous speech monitoring project, Umati, currently running in Kenya and Nigeria, and a publication on ICT and Governance (Civic Tech Landscape) in East Africa . Nanjira is also the editor of Innovative Africa: The new face of Africa, a series of essays on the emerging African tech landscape. Nanjira also sits on the Advisory Board (Africa) for Sum of Us, and is also a board member at Kenya’s Media Policy Research Centre, with whom she has published a working paper on the changing media landscape in the country as impacted by social media. Nanjira is also a recent addition to the Networked News Lab, that brings together journalists, researchers and thought leaders in Kenya to support research,dialogue and innovation in news media.

Natacha Quester-Séméon

Natacha Quester-Séméon is entrepreneur, founder and CEO of youARhere, an agency specialized in the creation of innovative projects, websites and mobile applications in the field of culture, tourism and entertainment, as well as in digital strategy consulting and social.

Among other things, youARhere created CultureClic editor, a cultural and tourist app in partnership with the Ministry of Culture, the BNF and NMR. The app has been downloaded more than 500,000 times.

Evangelist of the Internet and new media since the beginning of the Internet era, Natacha is a journalist, video blogger, columnist and radio entrepreneur.
Established in 2003, her blog MemoireVive.tv was one of the very first video blog in the world. It was accredited media by political parties in 2007.

In 2007, she co-founded Girl Power 3.0, a group that aims at encouraging the presence of women in the tech, innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem.