Personal Democracy Forum

Anthony Zacharzewski runs the Democratic Society, a non-partisan membership organisation promoting participation, citizenship and better democracy. His background is in central and local government in the UK. At various times he has been speechwriter at the Department of Health; secretary to the Cabinet Committees on health, food and agriculture; lead official for first-round Sure Start projects in East London and South-West England, and project leader in the Treasury’s internal think tank, the Productivity and Structural Reform Team. He joined Brighton & Hove City Council as Head of Policy in 2006, where he was responsible for strategy, community relations, and sustainability. After nine months on the authority’s board as Acting Director of Strategy & Governance, he left to work for the Society in February 2010.

Antonella Napolitano is the communications manager for the Italian Coalition for Civil Liberties (CILD), a multi-issue network of 32 NGOs advancing human rights in Italy. From 2010-2015 she was the Europe editor of techPresident. With CILD, she recently co-produced The 19 Million Project, an event that brought together a coalition of journalists, coders, designers, digital strategists, and global citizens, to address the spiraling refugee crisis and finding innovative ways to advance the narrative around the issue. In the past, she served most notably as editor and outreach coordinator for Diritto Di Sapere, an Italian NGO that advocates for a broader access to information in Italy and abroad; as media consultant and volunteers coordinator for an Italian political party; and as community manager for Kublai, a project of the Italian Ministry of Economic Development. She also worked at the Consulate of Italy in New York. She is the author of three books (in Italian) on the use : LinkedIn per aziende e professionisti (2015), Facebook e la comunicazione politica (2013) and LinkedIn. La rete per trovare il lavoro dei sogni (2011), and regularly writes about tech and politics for Italian and international outlets.

Antonella holds a master’s in Media Studies from the University of Bologna, and was a research fellow at Vassar College.

Antonio Casilli is an associate professor of Digital Humanities at Telecom ParisTech (Paris Institute of Technology) and a researcher in sociology at the Edgar-Morin Center (EHESS, Paris).
He is the author of “Les liaisons numériques” (Ed. du Seuil, 2010) and co-author of “Against the Hypothesis of the End of Privacy” (Springer, 2014).

He writes on the research blog Bodyspacesociety. He is also a frequent guest on Radio France Culture.

(Photo Credit: © Ulf Andersen)

Antony Declercq is a graduate of New York University’s College of Arts and Sciences and holds B.A.s in anthropology and political science. A Belgian citizen, he lived in China for 15 years before moving to New York City, and speaks fluent English, Chinese, and Dutch.

Antony is currently a Research Fellow with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) as well as with The Governance Lab at NYU (The GovLab), where his research focuses on Internet governance, technology policy, and governance innovation.

Ari Hoffnung has been a leader in promoting transparency and civic engagement initiatives since he joined the Comptroller’s Office in 2010. He is the driving force behind Checkbook NYC, a website that empowers the public to keep an eye on more than $70 billion in annual government spending with detailed, up-to-date information about New York City’s revenues, expenditures, contracts, payroll, and budget, and was called the best of its kind by the U.S. Public Interest Research Group. Hoffnung also spearheaded The People’s Budget NYC, a crowd-sourcing website that offers taxpayers a platform to vote, discuss, and suggest new budget ideas.

Hoffnung currently serves as Comptroller Liu’s representative at the Office of Payroll Administration (OPA) and the Financial Services Agency (FISA), where he played an integral role in ending the runaway spending associated with the CityTime project. Hoffnung was also appointed to the newly formed NYC Technology Development Corporation which provides senior project management and other consulting services for the City’s most critical and complex information technology projects.

Prior to joining Comptroller Liu’s administration, Hoffnung served as Chief of Staff to then-City Councilman Simcha Felder, and was a Managing Director at Bear Stearns where he worked for more than a decade. Hoffnung holds an MBA in Finance from New York University’s Stern School of Business and a bachelor’s degree from Queens College. He resides in the Riverdale section of the Bronx with his wife, Annie, and their two children.

Ari Melber is an attorney, television commentator and a correspondent for The Nation magazine, the oldest political weekly in America.

During the 2008 presidential election, Melber traveled with the Obama Campaign on special assignment for The Washington Independent. In 2010, Melber authored a 74-page special report for techPresident analyzing the first year of Organizing for America, the 13-million person network that grew out of the 2008 presidential campaign. “The most comprehensive and insightful account of Obama’s ‘Organizing for America’ to date,” according to Northwestern political scientist Daniel Galvin, the report was covered by New York Times, Washington Post, Politico, Slate, National Journal, Rolling Stone and the BBC.

Melber previously served as a Legislative Aide in the U.S. Senate and as a national staff member of the 2004 John Kerry Presidential Campaign. He also co-founded “Ask The President,” a project to inject citizen questions into White House press conferences, which Columbia Journalism Review dubbed “an idea whose time has come,” and he has participated in several online coalitions advocating open government.

As a commentator on public affairs, Melber frequently appears on national television, including CNBC, C-SPAN, NBC and MSNBC; his views have been quoted by publications such as The Washington Post, The New York Times and Time, among others; and he has been a featured speaker at Harvard, Oxford, Yale, Columbia and NYU, among other institutions. Melber received a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and a J.D. from Cornell Law School, where he was an editor of the Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy. He is a member of the New York Bar and the American Constitution Society.

Ariel Kennan draws upon her experience in multidisciplinary design and technology to lead research, concept development, and design, collaborating closely with design teams, vendors, and partners. She has created digital strategy and policy, mobile applications, websites, and media installations with a wide variety of cultural, corporate, and government partners. Her projects have won numerous awards, including the 2013 Tribeca Film Festival Award for Transmedia. Ariel currently serves the City of New York as Director, Innovation and Design at the Mayor’s Office of Operations, where she is improving service delivery and advancing equity and opportunity for all New Yorkers. She is an alumna of Parsons School for Design and has held fellowships with Code for America and the Center for Urban Pedagogy.

A freelance designer, Armel Le Coz is passionate about strategies of open government, based on principles of transparency, participation and collaboration. He is a consultant on design and innovation for local government, associations and enterprises.

Le Coz is co-founder of Démocratie Ouverte (Open Democracy), a community where he engages in conversations on a more effective and accountable democracy. He is the creator of Parlément et Citoyens (Parliament and Citizens), a policy collaborative platform that allows citizens and deputies to work together on bills.
A member of FING (Fondation Internet Nouvelle Génération), he’s particularly involved in the Innovations DémocraTIC program. He is also co-founder of parTICipation citoyenne (Citizen participation), “a toolbox of experiences and ideas” for participatory democracy.

Le Coz studied in France and Canada and he’s engaged in everything innovative in opengov, open data, collaborative economy, crowdsourcing and innovation in economic models.

Artas is founder of Bribespot, a service for reporting bribes that visualizes corruption hotspots on an interactive map. A former UNDP employee and OECD consultant, currently Artas works as a marketing consultant helping commercial companies talk with their customers in a language that they understand. Artas is fascinated by the idea of data-driven services and is actively involved in social initiatives that seek to create more responsible Government with the help of technology. A native of Lithuania, Artas lives and works in Berlin, Germany.

Arzu Geybullayeva is a regional analyst and online blogger. Shortly after starting her own blog flyingcarpetsandbrokenpipelines.blogspot.com in September 2008, she quickly grew in the field and became one of the few critical English language bloggers writing on Azerbaijan. She has given a number of trainings on the use of new media and its advantages in authoritarian states as well as written a course on online journalism, video and audio blogging for Iranian Journalists. Currently, she is with the Imagine Center for Conflict Transformation and is editor-in-chief at the online platform The Neutral Zone. Arzu also writes for the Italian online publication Osservatorio Balcani e Caucaso and continues to give trainings on the use of online media for activists, organizers, and journalists.

Asha Curran is Chief Innovation Officer and Director of the Center for Innovation & Social Impact at the 92nd Street Y. She is the director of #GivingTuesday, the annual day of giving following Black Friday and Cyber Monday, as well as a portfolio of global, digitally-driven initiatives including 7 Days of Genius, the Social Good Summit, 92Y American Conversation, and the Women inPower and Venture Fellowships. She is the recipient of the 2015 Social Capital Hero Award and named a 2016 Woman of Influence by New York Business Journals. 92Y was recently named one of the 10 Most Innovative Nonprofits by Fast Company.

Ashley Spillane has been affiliated with Atlas from the project’s start, doing everything from researching and writing reports to running the production process. During election-year sabbaticals from Atlas, Ashley has worked with the DCCC’s independent expenditure in 2010 and the AFL-CIO’s direct mail program in 2008. She has also done several campaigns around the country, including the presidential primary campaigns of Tom Vilsack and Hillary Clinton; the 2006 governor’s race in Iowa; John Kerry’s presidential race; and the 2002 Maryland governor’s race. Ashley has also done some consulting work for the National Democratic Institute (NDI) in the Middle East and Africa.

Astra Taylor is a writer, documentary filmmaker, and activist. Her films include Zizek!, a feature documentary about the world’s most outrageous philosopher, and Examined Life, a series of excursions with contemporary thinkers including Slavoj Zizek, Judith Butler, Cornel West, Peter Singer and others. Both movies premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. Taylor’s writing has appeared in The Nation, the London Review of Books, n+1, The Baffler, and other publications. She is the editor of Examined Life, a companion volume to the film, and coeditor of Occupy!: Scenes from Occupied America. She also helped launch the Occupy offshoot Strike Debt and its Rolling Jubilee campaign. Most recently she is the author of the book The People’s Platform: Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age.