Personal Democracy Forum

Rob Bluey is a journalist and blogger who leads The Heritage Foundation’s investigative reporting unit and is director of the Heritage Center for Media and Public Policy. He oversaw the redesign of Heritage.org, as well as the creation of several Heritage blogs and e-newsletters, including The Foundry and Scribe.

In 2006, He co-founded the weekly Bloggers Briefing, described by The Washington Times as a place for conservative bloggers to share information and ideas, and continues to host it today. He served as a coordinator for the Open House Project, an effort to increase government transparency in Congress. As a reporter for Cybercast News Service, Bluey was the first journalist to challenge the authenticity of documents used by CBS News to question President Bush’s service in the Texas Air National Guard.

Campaigns & Elections magazine named him a “Rising Star” in 2008. Politico placed Bluey among Washington’s “Top 50 Politicos.” “He’s an online entrepreneurial genius,” Terry Jeffery, Cybercast News Service editor in chief, told Politics magazine. “He’s taught people how to bypass the establishment media, and that’s been so valuable to the conservative movement.”

Bluey grew up in upstate New York and graduated from Ithaca College, where he was editor of its award-winning newspaper, The Ithacan. He remains closely involved with his alma mater, serving for six years on Ithaca College’s Alumni Association Advisory Board of Directors.

Robin Carnahan leads 18F’s State and Local Government Practice. She is a businesswoman, lawyer and former Missouri Secretary of State. Her life-long passion for improving how people experience and value their government inspires her work helping state and local governments get the digital tools they need to deliver better services to more people that cost less. Today, in addition to her work at 18F, Robin advises a number of civic technology companies and serves on the boards of the National Democratic Institute and the LaunchCode Foundation. She also serves on the Democracy Fund’s National Advisory Committee, is a Senior Fellow at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Service and was a 2013 Visiting Fellow at the Institute of Politics. She frequently speaks about government innovation through smarter use of technology and in 2014 joined the global strategy firm Albright Stonebridge Group as a Senior Advisor.

Robin Chase is founder and CEO of Buzzcar, a service that brings together car owners and drivers in a carsharing marketplace. Buzzcar.com empowers individuals to take control of their mobility, without looking to governments or big businesses for solutions. Robin is also founder and former CEO of Zipcar, the largest carsharing company in the world, and GoLoco, an online ridesharing community.

She is on the Board of the World Resources Institute, the National Advisory Council for Innovation & Entrepreneurship for the US Department of Commerce, and the OECD’s International Transport Forum Advisory Board. She also served on the Intelligent Transportations Systems Program Advisory Committee for the US Department of Transportation, the Massachusetts Governor’s Transportation Transition Working Group, and Boston Mayor’s Wireless Task Force. Robin lectures widely, has been frequently featured in the major media, and has received many awards in the areas of innovation, design, and environment, including Time 100 Most Influential People, Fast Company Fast 50 Innovators, and BusinessWeek Top 10 Designers. Robin graduated from Wellesley College and MIT’s Sloan School of Management, and was a Harvard University Loeb Fellow.

Robyn Caplan is a Research Fellow at the GovLab, and a SC&I Fellow and PhD student at Rutgers University’s School of Communication and Information Studies. Her research focuses on information and technology policy, open data, medical informatics, and the social and ethical dimensions of legislating data. She earned her MA in Media, Culture, and Communication at Steinhardt’s School of Culture, Education, and Human Development, with a focus on Technology and Society where she worked with on determining jurisdictional issues emerging from remote data storage. She is the co-founder of AppAutopsy.com, an online application which uses data scraping and visualization to unveil the politics and values in digital applications.

Prior to accepting her fellowship at Rutgers, she worked as the Digital Editor for MAKERS.com, a PBS/AOL website on the history of the women’s movement in the United States. She has worked for numerous startups in multiple capacities, as a researcher, writer, and project manager. Robyn received her undergraduate degree from University of Toronto, and is originally from Ontario, Canada. She can be found on Twitter @RobynCaplan.

Rod Beckstrom is a well-known cybersecurity authority, Internet leader and expert on organizational leadership and social networking. He is the former President and CEO of ICANN, the multi-stakeholder organization that helps keep the global Internet secure, stable and unified, and was the founding Director of the U.S. National Cybersecurity Center, the office entrusted with coordinating the Federal Government’s cybersecurity efforts. He is co-author of the critically acclaimed book The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations and a frequent international media commentator and public speaker.

Rod currently leads IFTF’s Technology Horizons team. With a deep background in public health policy, he has served in several different capacities at IFTF since 1995, including leading theFood and Health programs and directing research for the Technology Horizons program. In the course of his work, Rod speaks to executive audiences and helps them find innovative strategies for participating in the global economy. His research focus areas have included personal health technologies, communication and messaging practices in the workplace and home, social networks and abundant connectivity, and health-aware environments.

Born in Oakland, California, in a time and place of great social change, Rod attended nearby UC Berkeley to better understand what was happening. There he earned a BA in American history and a master’s of public policy. After working one summer enforcing the Voting Rights Act for the Justice Department, Rod realized that public policy was not as future oriented as it might be and was inspired to do something about it. He came to IFTF to forecast the future of the California health care safety net and ended up staying on.

Rodrigo is a Research Assistant at MIT’s Center for Civic Media and a masters student in Comparative Media Studies. His research focuses on crowdfunding for civic projects and telephone-based ICT4D. He is is a policy advisor to the UK-based civic crowdfunding platform Spacehive and a technical consultant to the United Nations Development Program. Before joining the Center Rodrigo was based in Mumbai, where he was a co-founding editor of Conde Nast India’s digital editorial business. Previously he worked with the BBC and Bloomberg News in London.

Roman Udot is a co-chairman of Golos movement, electoral observer and data analyst, blogger and activist. Golos movement was formed by core specialists and experts of the famous Association GOLOS, which activities were suspended by the authorities after a heavy-handed crackdown. The movement continues the association’s long-standing traditions in the field of civic election observation.

From Moscow’s anti-putsch human shield of 1991 to the Ukrainian Orange Revolution of 2004 to the pro-democratic mass protests of 2012-13 in Russia, Roman Udot, an activist, blogger and electoral expert, tried to make his modest contribution to a peaceful transition of ex-soviet states to democracy.

At GOLOS, Roman Udot has been in charge of data collection services since 2011 and has helped to reform them on principles of crowdsourcing and full automation. Later, as the coordinator of the electoral observation projects, his task was to streamline and interconnect the information flows from observers and voters to specialized GOLOS services and finally, to social and mass media at large.

He has had an honour to share his experience and findings with colleagues at ENEMO, EPDE, Norwegian Helsinki committee, OSCE, Community of Democracies, Belarus Watch et al.

Ron Bouganim is the founder of the Govtech Fund: the first-ever venture fund focused on startups that help government be more responsive, efficient and better able to serve society. Previously, as an active angel investor and advisor, Ron worked closely with more than twenty startups including ShareThrough, HelloSign, PagerDuty, and Close.io. Ron has also been actively involved with a number of nonprofits as a donor, advisor and board member including Kiva, Full Circle Fund, Endeavor, Presidio Knolls School and Code For America.

Named one of Fast Company’s 100 Most Creative People in Business, Ron J. Williams is the CEO and Co-founder of Knodes, the social data context platform that specializes in targeted word of mouth. He obsesses about making human networks actually work and loves connecting people. Before co-founding Knodes, Ron co-founded SnapGoods, an early leader in the “sharing economy”. He believes that the great irony of this hyper connected age is that we still resort to broadcast spray and pray tactics to activate support. He is a Brooklyn native, active mentor, speaker and lover of speed. He gets pretty amped about STEM education, and he is a big asker of “why not?”

Rose is passionate about using the power of technology to create social change. She is the co-founder and CEO HandUp, a direct donation system for homeless people and neighbors in need. HandUp lets you donate to specific people, with 100% of donations go toward basics like food, technology, and housing. Previously, Rose served as COO at SuperBetter Labs and as a data manager for Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign. Rose is active in the community organizing groups like Science Hack Day and Food Not Bombs. She lives in San Francisco and loves street art.