Personal Democracy Forum

Birgitta is a politician (poetician) and an activist member of the Althing, the Icelandic parliament, formerly representing the Citizens’ Movement which she co-founded in the wake of the Icelandic financial crisis and The Movement, but now representing the Pirate Party. Her district was the Reykjavik Constituency South for the Civic Movement, but the South West for the Pirate Party. She was elected to the Icelandic parliament in April 2009 on behalf of a movement aiming for democratic reform beyond party politics of left and right. Birgitta has been an activist and a spokesperson for various groups, such as WikiLeaks, Saving Iceland and Friends of Tibet in Iceland. She also co-founded International Modern Media Institute with a group of 21st legislative transformation enthusiasts and experts, and she currently serves as the chairman of its board.

Boaz Chen is the Director of DemOS, an innovative operating system for democratic communities of any size, that integrate public engagement as part of the board decision-making process. Using DemOS every community can gradually open its process, at its own pace, building trust while balancing between the desire to share and the need to operate efficiently.

Boaz was a consultant for the Israeli Government Internet Committee (1998), acted as a member of the e- government initiative board, and personally led its biggest projects.

He co-founder and managed Netwise and grew it to be the largest Internet and mobile systems integrator in Israel. In addition to his role as CEO, he continued to serve as strategic consultant, leading innovative award-wining projects for his clients. He recently sold the company to focus on DemOs. Boaz was lecturer on the MBA program at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, served on boards and advisory committees for several start-ups and is an executive in the Israeli chapter of YPO.

Brad Burnham is a managing partner at Union Square Ventures. He began his career in information technology with AT&T in 1979. Brad held a variety of sales, marketing and business development positions there until 1990 when he spun Echo Logic out of Bell Laboratories. As the first AT&T “venture,” Echo Logic was a catalyst for the creation of AT&T’s venture capital arm, AT&T Ventures. When Echo Logic was sold in 1993, Brad joined AT&T Ventures as an Executive in Residence. He became a Principal in 1994 and a General Partner in 1996. At AT&T Ventures, Brad was responsible for 14 investments including Argon Networks, Audible, Avesta Technologies, Classic Sports Network, Multex Systems, Physicians Online, and Paytrust.

Brad currently serves on the boards of Tumblr, Stack Exchange, DuckDuckGo, DuoLingo, Flurry, GetGlue, SimulMedia, Meetup, YieldMo and Bug Labs. He represented USV on the board of Indeed prior to the companies successful exit. Brad has a BA in Political Science from Wesleyan University, is married with two kids and lives in New York City.

Brad Smith is Microsoft’s general counsel and executive vice president, Legal and Corporate Affairs. He leads the company’s Department of Legal and Corporate Affairs (LCA), which has approximately 1,100 employees located in 55 countries and is responsible for the company’s legal work, its intellectual property portfolio and patent licensing business, and its government affairs and philanthropic work. He also serves as Microsoft’s corporate secretary and its chief compliance officer.

Since becoming general counsel in 2002, Smith has overseen numerous negotiations leading to competition law and intellectual property agreements with governments around the world and with companies across the IT sector. He has helped spearhead the growth in the company’s intellectual property portfolio and the launch of global campaigns to bring enforcement actions against those engaged in software piracy and counterfeiting, malware, consumer fraud and other digital crimes. He has played a leading role within Microsoft and in the IT sector on privacy, immigration, and computer science and STEM education policy issues.

Smith has played a central role in ensuring that Microsoft fulfills its corporate responsibilities. In recent years Microsoft has consistently ranked in the top 2 percent of the S&P 500 for corporate governance scores. He serves as Microsoft’s senior executive responsible for the company’s corporate citizenship and philanthropic work, including Microsoft YouthSpark, a company-wide, global initiative to create opportunities for 300 million youth over three years. In its first year alone Microsoft YouthSpark has created new opportunities for more than 103 million young people in over 100 countries around the world. Smith has also helped advance several significant diversity and pro bono initiatives, both within Microsoft and in the broader legal profession. He currently co-chairs the board of directors of Kids in Need of Defense (KIND) and is the chair of the Leadership Council on Legal Diversity.

In Washington state, Smith has served as chair of the Washington Roundtable, a leading Washington state-based business organization, and he has advanced several statewide education initiatives. In 2010 he chaired for Governor Christine Gregoire her Higher Education Funding Task Force, and in 2012 he co-chaired the transition team for incoming Governor Jay Inslee. Since 2011 he has chaired at the appointment of the Governor the Washington Opportunity Scholarship Program, the nation’s first private-public funded endowment to enable more students to attend college. In 2010-11, Smith and his wife, Kathy Surace-Smith, also an attorney, co-chaired the annual campaign for the United Way of King County, the country’s largest United Way campaign.

Before joining Microsoft in 1993, Smith was a partner at Covington & Burling, having worked in the firm’s Washington, D.C., and London offices. He graduated summa cum laude from Princeton University and received his law degree at the Columbia University School of Law. He also studied international law and economics at the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva, Switzerland.

In early 2013 Smith was named by the National Law Journal as one of the 100 most influential lawyers in the United States. He has written numerous articles and commentaries regarding international intellectual property and Internet, immigration and education policy issues, and has served as a lecturer at The Hague Academy of International Law.

Brian is the co-founder and CEO at Airbnb. He drives the company’s vision, strategy and growth as it provides interesting and unique ways for people to travel and changes the lives of its community. Under Brian’s leadership, Airbnb stands at the forefront of the sharing economy, and has expanded to over 600,000 listings in 192 countries. Brian met co-founder Joe Gebbia at the Rhode Island School of Design where he received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in industrial design.

Brian Elliot recently joined Amicus, a startup that creates innovative social fundraising and engagement tools for nonprofits. He is also the founder of Friendfactor, a gay rights organization for straight supporters. Brian led Friendfactor to create a groundbreaking peer-to-peer online advocacy tool, which thousands of New Yorkers used in the landmark 2011 New York marriage equality campaign, and was featured on the front page of the NYT. He has worked at Endeavor Global, Bain & Company, The Bridgespan Group, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. He holds an MBA from Harvard Business School, an MPA from Harvard Kennedy School, and a Public Policy degree from Stanford University. Brian is a winner of the SXSW 2012 Dewey Winburne Community Service Award, the 2010 Harvard Business School Social Entrepreneurship Fellowship, and his work to start Friendfactor was also named one of Yahoo!’s Top 10 Inspiring Acts of 2010.

Brian Forde has spent more than a decade at the nexus of technology, entrepreneurship, and public policy. He is currently the Director of Digital Currency at the MIT Media Lab where he leads efforts to mainstream digital currencies like Bitcoin through research, and incubation of high-impact applications of the emerging technology. Most recently he was the Senior Advisor for Mobile and Data Innovation at the White House where he spearheaded efforts to leverage emerging technologies to address the President’s most critical national priorities. Prior to his work at the White House, Brian founded one of the largest phone companies in Nicaragua after serving as a business and technology volunteer in the Peace Corps. In recognition of his work, Brian was named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum.

Brian Gryth is a passionate advocate for civic innovation and technology driven open government. Brian is the Manager of the Operational Support Team in the Business and Licensing Division of the Colorado Secretary of State’s Office. While at the Secretary of State, Brian led the creation and managed of the Operational Support Team. Through the adoption of continuous improvement and data-driven management processes, this team has implemented more effective and efficient service delivery to the Division’s customers. Most recently, Brian lead the effort to gain funding to create the Business Intelligence Center program. This program will centralize access to government data relevant to businesses and implement a civic apps challenge to incentivize the tech community to use the data and create tools useful to business owners.

Brian also co-founded OpenColorado, a non-profit formed to help facilitate a transformation in government that will lead to a more useable and interactive government. Through the use of open source technologies, OpenColorado deployed data.opencolorado.org, one of the first community driven CKAN data catalogs in the world. This catalog makes nearly 700 government datasets accessible to the public and developer community. As part of OpenColorado’s educational efforts, Brian led the effort to create opengovernmentinitiative.org, which creates and publishes open government policy templates to help municipal governments adopt and institutionalize open government in their organizations.

Brian has also co-organized multiple unconferences and community events, such as Gov 2.0 Camp Rocky Mountains, CityCamp Colorado 2010, 2011, 2012, and Denver Startup Week. In order to help reach a new population of civic activists, Brian has planned or advised the planning of several civic hackathons, including Colorado Code of Communities Civic Hackathon, Hack for Longmont, and Hack4Colorado. Brain frequent presents on the topics of Open Government, data transparency, innovation, and social entrepreneurship. Brian earned a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from the University of Northern Colorado and a Juris Doctor, cum laude, from Hamline University School of Law.