Personal Democracy Forum

Xavier Leonard is a designer, researcher and advocate of technologies that make communities more resilient. A graduate of Columbia University, he has been the Public Technology and Data Strategist for the City of San Diego’s Civic Innovation Lab, Media and Communications Specialist with the Center on Policy Initiatives and a Senior Fellow in Emerging Technology at the SDSU Visualization Center. He was the founding director of Heads on Fire and the Heads on Fire Fab Lab. That program was selected as a national model in the United States for teaching technology in out-of-school settings.

Leonard has been honored as a Z-Fellow of the Zero Divide Foundation, an Ideas Institute Fellow of the MIT Media Lab, and a TEC Champion by the United States Congress. His design projects have been presented at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia; the Institute of Contemporary Art,London; The Henry Art Gallery, Seattle; the Biennial Soundwave Festival, San Francisco; Franklin Furnace, NYC; The Knitting Factory, NYC; and the Centre International Francais, Ouagadougo, Burkina Faso, among other venues. His work has been supported by the Western States Arts Federation; the San Diego Foundation; the Pennsylvania Council of the Arts; the Institute of International Education; the Pew Fellowship in the Arts, New American Radio and the Jacobs Center for Neighborhood Innovation.

A proponent and producer of Open Source software and hardware projects, Leonard has spoken on the benefits of Open Knowledge, Open Data and Open Government at the Open Knowledge Festival in Helsinki and Berlin; the United Nations’ World Summit on the Information Society in Tunis, Tunisia; the Air Jaldi Summit on Wireless Technologies in Dharamsala, India; the International Summit for Community Wireless Networks; the Nonprofit Technology Network Conference; the Community Technology Center Network Conference; the signature Maker Faires in San Mateo and NYC, TEDx America’s Finest City and the Global Fab Lab Conference. Most recently, he was Innovator-in-Residence at San Fransisco’s Children’s Creativity Museum.

Yvette is a human rights activist who envisions a world in which millions of people have the skills and the tools to, safely and effectively, participate in the fight for human rights. She serves as the Executive Director of WITNESS.org, a global team that enables activists using video and participatory technologies to fight effectively against injustice and realize rights for their communities. Linking on the ground needs to systems changes, WITNESS also advocates for scalable solutions that optimize human rights uses of consumer technologies and online platforms.

YAT is an advisor/board member of FoundationCenter.org, Accessnow.org, Majal.org, and is a co-initiator of BK@24FPS.

Zac Moffatt is currently the Digital Director for Mitt Romney for President where he oversees digital strategy, online advertising, email marketing and online fundraising for the campaign. Before joining the Mitt Romney campaign Zac founded, along with Michael Beach, Targeted Victory, a full service interactive advertising agency that has quickly grown into serving over 100+ federal and national clients including the Republican National Committee, Marco Rubio for Senate and FedEx. Prior to founding Targeted Victory Zac served as the Deputy Director for Statewide efforts at Freedoms Watch, the RNC Director of Political Education and the Victory Director for the Maryland Republican Party for Governor Robert Ehrlich and Senate candidate Michael Steele. He has also served on campaigns in NY, OR and RI as well as at the 55th Presidential Inaugural Committee and the 2004 Republican National Convention. Prior to the Convention, Zac served as the Associate Chief of Staff for Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York City following the Mayor’s successful election in 2001.

Zach Wahls is a sixth-generation Iowan, a proud Hawkeye, the son of two lesbian mothers and an outspoken advocate for marriage equality. Since a video of his testimony about his family before the iowa House Judiciary Committee became YouTube’s number one political video of 2011, he’s continued to share his story and advocate for full equality under the law. He has appeared on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, The Last Word With Lawrence O’Donnell and other media outlets. Zach is the author of My Two Moms: Lessons of Love, Strength and What Makes a Family to be published in spring 2012 by Gotham Books, an imprint of Penguin Group, USA. He lives in Iowa City, Iowa.

Zack Exley is a political and technology consultant and the co-founder and former president of the New Organizing Institute, a progressive political technology training organization. In July 2015, Exley joined the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign as a senior advisor responsible for distributed organizing. In 2004, he was the Director of Online Communications and Organizing on John Kerry’s presidential campaign and directed Internet operations for the UK Labour party’s re-election campaign in 2005. In both cases, the campaigns’ opponents attacked Exley as a controversial figure, hoping to make his hiring a campaign issue. Exley was Organizing Director at MoveOn.org during the group’s campaign to prevent the Iraq War, and during its controversial involvement with the Dean campaign. He was criticized then too, for “rigging” the “MoveOn Primary” in favor of Dean—a charge the group rejected. Exley began his political career working as a union organizer, and has also worked as a computer programmer.

Zephyr R. Teachout is an Associate Law Professor at Fordham. She is the former Director of Online Organizing for Howard Dean’s Campaign, National Director of the Sunlight Foundation, and Co-Founding Executive Director of the Fair Trial Initiative. Her research about corruption has been cited by the United States Supreme Court and the Montana Supreme Court. She is an internationally recognized expert on the impact of the Internet on electoral politics and government, and has appeared on Bill Moyers, PBS News Hour, and UP with Chris Hayes. Her innovative internet organizing efforts were featured on NPR and CNN, and in The Washington Examiner, The Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, PC World, and The New York Times. She serves on the Board of the Public Campaign Action Fund and Fight for the Future.

Zeynep Tufekci is an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina at the School of Information and a fellow at the Center for Information Technology Policy and Princeton University. Her research revolves around examining how technology and society interact especially for sociality, surveillance, social movements and civics. She also blogs at http://www.technosociology.org.

Zuzana Papazoski has managed NDI’s Western Balkans regional parliamentary initiative since 2007. The initiative provides MPs and parliamentary staff from Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, and Serbia with opportunities to exchange best practices related to oversight of the state budget process, parliamentary budgeting, staff development, development of parliamentary expert services and new administrative structures, effective committee operations, and e-parliament technology applications; with the ultimate goal of improving lawmaking and increasing transparency. Ms. Papazoski previously oversaw the Institute’s parliamentary program in Montenegro, where she worked extensively with the Montenegrin parliament to develop new rules of procedure and structures that emphasized transparency and accountability in national policymaking. She originally joined the Institute in 2000, managing NDIs parliamentary program in her native Slovakia. Ms. Papazoski has demonstrated regional expertise through her work as a trainer and consultant in Albania, Bosnia Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Montenegro, Macedonia, Serbia and Kyrgyzstan, as well as in efforts undertaken with UNDP, OSCE/ODIHR, UNMIK and Freedom House. She possesses extensive experience providing strategic guidance to political parties, and has helped design several local and regional political campaigns. Ms. Papazoski was a co-founder, legal advisor and board member of Civic Eye/Obcianske Oko, a Bratislava-based domestic election monitoring and civic advocacy organization. Earlier, she was the project manager of youth election programs for the Association in Support of Local Democracy. Ms. Papazoski earned her Master’s in Law from Comenius University in Bratislava. She is fluent in Slovak, Czech, and English with a working knowledge of Polish and Serbian/Bosnian/Montenegrin.