Personal Democracy Forum

Stacy leads Omidyar Network’s Governance & Citizen Engagement initiative in the United States. In this role, Stacy works to improve the relationship between citizens and government by promoting citizen engagement, government accountability and effectiveness, and improved public service delivery. Stacy’s portfolio includes Change.org, Code for America, Datakind , NationBuilder, NewsDeeply, SeeClickFix, and Tumml. She is a board member for Change.org and Code for America. Prior to joining Omidyar Network, Stacy spent nine years at Hewlett-Packard in senior roles spanning strategy, corporate development, and merger and acquisition transactions. Previously, Stacy was a project leader at the Boston Consulting Group, where she provided analysis and consulting for clients across multiple industries from healthcare to financial services. She began her career as an associate in corporate finance at JPMorgan Chase & Co. Stacy received an MBA with distinction from Harvard Business School, an MA in art history from the University of California, Berkeley, and a BA from Yale University, where she graduated summa cum laude and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.

Stav Shaffir, 26-year-old journalist, social activist, and red-headed leader of Israel’s social protest movement, has become the voice for people from all walks of Israeli society. Traveling around her country, she’s listened to the dreams of high school students, the concerns and ideas of entrepreneurs and business leaders, and the hopes and disappointment of workers. She represents the disenfranchised and speaks truth to power, through testimony in the Israeli Parliament, and public appearances on television and radio. She has been featured in Time Magazine, The New York Times, and on the BBC among others, and her columns have been published in the Israeli press, including Haaretz, Yedioth Aharonot, TheMarker, Ynet, and the Jewish Review of Books.

Before the 2011 protest movement was initiated, Stav worked as an editor for Yedioth Aharonot’s website and studied for her Master’s degree in the Philosophy and History of Science and Ideas at Tel Aviv University. Stav has a BA in Journalism and Sociology from City University London, where she was the recipient of the Olive Tree Program scholarship, a unique initiative for young leaders from Israel and Palestine. She also studied Music Composition at the Rimon School of Jazz and Contemporary Music and volunteered for educational and political initiatives, such as conflict resolution between the secular and the religious Jewish communities, and with asylum seekers in Israel.

Stef van Grieken studied Industrial Engineering and Philosophy and describes himself as “a tech-entrepreneur and a bit of a geek.”
He currently works as a Technical Program Manager at Google. His goal is to promote civic innovation through technology.

Before joining Google, Stef founded the Dutch civic technology organization Open State Foundation. With projects such as Nu.nl Public, Hack the Government, and Apps for the Nederland, he worked on increasing public accountability and transparency, which owed him a ‘Time Magazine Top Website of 2012’ award and a ‘European Public Sector Award’.

Stefan Hankin is the founder and president of Lincoln Park Strategies. Over the past decade and a half, Stefan has led research efforts for political candidates running for President, Congress, Governor, Attorney General, and Mayor, as well as candidates on the state legislative level; as well as message-driven communication campaigns for a wide range of clients from Fortune 500 companies to trade associations, non-profits, industry groups and colleges and universities. His research and analysis has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, USA Today, and the Christian Science Monitor as well as political outlets such as Politico and National Journal. He has also appeared on numerous radio and TV programs including WJLA’s Nightly News, CSpan, ABCNews’ Topline, and CTV Televisions’ Question Period discussing his research and opinions. A native of the Boston area, Stefan now resides in Washington DC with his wide and daughter.

Stephen Clark is the Head of Web Communications at the European Parliament he had a Brief experience in finance, followed by public service in the European Union. Since his time at the European Parliament, he has been involved in parliamentary committees, specialisation in budgetary and anti-fraud fields; subsequently in the top management team, with an emphasis on parliamentary and organisational reform; and for the last five years he has been the Head of Web communications, with a specialisation in online communication which has been pushing the EU institutional communications field to its forefront, helping to make the European Parliament a leader in the field of political/institutional communications. He is the Co- Author of Europe’s Parliament : People, Places, Politics released in May 2012, and has studied Languages at the University of Oxford.

As a partner at Omidyar Network, Stephen brings exceptional experience in applying media and technology to create positive social impact. Stephen leads the global Government Transparency initiative and a portfolio that includes a broad range of national and global organizations. Many are innovators in the use of technology to help make governments more responsive and aid citizens in holding their governments to account. The portfolio includes: Sunlight Foundation, Global Voices, Fundación Ciudadano Inteligente, mySociety, New Citizen, Janaagraha and Ushahidi, among others.

Prior to Omidyar Network, Stephen served as the chief executive of BBC Media Action, where he led a period of sustained growth that included building programs in more than 40 countries in the developing world. Stephen helped establish the organization’s international reputation as one of the largest and most successful organizations using media and communications to improve the lives of the world’s poor and promote better governance and transparency worldwide. Prior to the BBC, Stephen held executive positions at several non-profit organizations based in the United Kingdom and the developing world.

Stephen is based in London and is a board member of Ushahidi, Global Voices, and mySociety. He holds an MA in Oriental and African studies from the University of London.

Steve Grove leads a team at Google called the News Lab, focused on empowering innovation at the intersection of media and technology. Before the News Lab, he started his career at Google by building its News and Politics team at YouTube. Bringing the first media organizations and political campaigns onto the platform, he built a series of partnerships and programs that created opportunities for YouTube users to gain nationwide exposure during key moments in the media cycle. His team created such projects as the CNN/YouTube Debates, a series of YouTube Interviews with the President, and CitizenTube. After YouTube, he hired and led a 75-person team called “community partnerships”, focused on growing Google’s social efforts on Google+. Before working in technology, Steve was a journalist in his hometown of Northfield, MN and later at the Boston Globe and ABC News.

Steve Jacobs is the Digital Communications Director for NYC Digital, where he oversees outbound digital communications from City Hall and for the city government at large. Prior to joining the City, he spent five years working for Blue State Digital, overseeing digital communications strategy for all the agency’s clients. During those five years he took a brief, but not at all restful, three-month vacation to help lead the email fundraising team for the final push of President Obama’s reelection campaign. In his free time, he tweets about bicycles, tie clips, and standing desks.

Steven Clift is @democracy on Twitter. In 1994 he launched E-Democracy.org, the world’s first election information website. After launching the State of Minnesota’s e-government program at 25, he spent over a decade speaking and consulting on democracy and community online across 30 countries. Today as E-Democracy’s Executive Director and an Ashoka Fellow, his focus is on inclusive community engagement via the Knight Foundation funded non-profit BeNeighbors.org initiative with 15,000+ members in the Twin Cities. Steven lives with his wife and two small children in a house with an open front porch in Minneapolis, Minnesota. From here he connects daily with over 1,000 of his nearest neighbors to generate inspiring community good via his local BeNeighbors forum on E-Democracy.

Steven Renderos is the National Organizer at the Center for Media Justice. He is passionate about the role of media and communications in building movements for social change. He’s been a community organizer for the past 10 years leading campaigns for affordable housing, immigrant rights and most recently media policy fights. He helped lead CMJ’s advocacy and organizing efforts including the Campaign for Prison Phone Justice, a national campaign fighting to lower the high costs of prison phone calls.

Previously, Steven led the Media Justice program at Main Street Project in Minneapolis, MN where he helped jumpstart a local collaborative that will be applied for a radio license in the fall 2013. Steven aka DJ Ren is also the co-founder of Radio Pocho, a collaborative of Latin@ radio DJs in Minneapolis who’s mission is to explore the musical roots of Latin@s raised in the United States.

Steven grew up in from Los Angeles, CA before attending college at Hamline University in St. Paul, MN and now resides in Brooklyn, NY.

Stewart Kirkpatrick is the Head of Digital for Yes Scotland.
Since he became involved in YesScotland its Facebook likes have grown from 5,000 to more than 250,000, Twitter followers from 5,000 to 72,000. YouTube views have grown from 25,000 to 630,000. Website traffic has quadrupled. And he has built a large committed team of online volunteers. He is an expert in targeting key messages to multiple target audiences across all digital platforms using great content. He is also highly skilled at setting up, building and managing teams, as well as effectively engaging with stakeholders. This study by Edinburgh University shows the effectiveness of his work
Previously he was Editor (as well as part-owner and director) of The Caledonian Mercury, Scotland’s first truly online national newspaper. Launched on 25 January, 2010, it was read by 150,000 unique users per month during his editorship. Stewart was named “Multimedia Publisher of the Year 2010” in the Regional Press Awards and the Caley Merc was ‘Highly Commended’ in the UK Newspaper Awards ‘Best Digital Service’ category – coming joint second with The Guardian and beating the Telegraph and WSJ.com.

He is a leading expert in content strategy, digital marketing and media management.
Previously he was the Content Marketing Director of w00tonomy, part of the Scottish Government’s digital roster. He was Editor of scotsman.com from July 2000 to May 2007. In that time traffic has increased tenfold, the site was one of Google News’s top 30 sources and it won and was shortlisted for many national and international awards.

The UK Press Gazette has named Stewart as one of the top 50 people shaping online journalism.