Human Rights Center

Michael Hoffman
Michael Hoffman is the CEO of See3 Communications, a firm that helps nonprofits and causes use the internet for advocacy, education and fundraising. He is an internet entrepreneur, and an expert in the use of social media in the nonprofit sector. Hoffman is frequently asked to consult with organizations about marketing strategies and new media development. He is frequently quoted in trade journals, industry blogs and the mainstream press about the intersection of social media and causes. Hoffman is a founder of DoGooderTV and EarthFirst.com, and is a nationally sought-after speaker on topics such as cause marketing, and the revolutionary power of web video for social change.

Melanie Light
Melanie Light is an author and multi-media dabbler. She is a co-author of Coal Hollow and the founding executive director of Fotovision, a nonprofit that provides community and education for documentary photographers. She has written about documentary photographers in catalogues for exhibitions at the Southeast Museum of Photography in Daytona Beach, SF Camerawork and the Museum of Photographic Arts in San Diego, among others.

Gilles Peress is a photographer with The New Yorker and recipient of the 1996 International Center of Photography Infinity Award among many others. He has been with Magnum Photos, the prestigious photography agency founded by Robert Capa, since 1971. His photographs are exhibited in and collected by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Chicago Art Institute; and the Minneapolis Institute of Art, among others. His books include Telex Iran: In the Name of the Revolution, The Silence, Farewell to Bosnia, The Graves: Srebrenica and Vukovar (with Eric Stover), and A Village Destroyed, May 14, 1999: War Crimes in Kosovo (with Fred Abrahams and Eric Stover).

Glenn Ruga
Glenn Ruga is the founder of SocialDocumentary.net, a new web featuring documentary photography from around the world. He is also a full-time graphic designer, a part-time social documentarian, and a life-long human rights activist. Ruga has created traveling and online documentary exhibits on an immigrant community in Holyoke, MA, on the struggle for a multicultural future in Bosnia, and the war and aftermath in Kosovo. Ruga is the owner and creative director of Visual Communications, a graphic design firm located in Lowell, Mass. He is also the Founder and President of the Center for Balkan Development (www.balkandevelopment.org), a non-profit organization created in 1993 to help stop the genocide in Bosnia and create a just and sustainable future in the former Yugoslavia.

Yvette J. Alberdingk Thijm
Yvette J. Alberdingk Thijm is Executive Director of WITNESS, the international human rights organization that opens the eyes of the world to human rights. WITNESS empowers people to use video and online technologies to transform personal stories of abuse into powerful tools for justice, promoting public engagement and policy change. She is an attorney with nearly two decades of experience in media and new technologies. Prior to joining WITNESS, she served as Executive Vice President of Content Strategy & Acquisition at Joost, the global online video platform formed by Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis, the founders of Skype and Kazaa. Previously, Alberdingk Thijm spent more than a decade at MTV Networks International (MTVNI) and was instrumental in its international growth and forays into new media. Alberdingk Thijm also served on the Advisory Board of Lioness, a documentary about five female soldiers in Iraq. She is currently spearheading WITNESS’ innovation strategies with projects like the Hub (http://hub.witness.org), the online global channel for human rights.

Patrick Ball
Patrick Ball, Ph.D., is the Director of the Human Rights Program at the Benetech Initiative which includes the Martus project and the Human Rights Data Analysis Group (HRDAG). Since 1991, Dr. Ball has designed information management systems and conducted statistical analysis for large-scale human rights data projects used by truth commissions, non-governmental organizations, tribunals and United Nations missions in El Salvador, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Haiti, South Africa, Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Sri Lanka, Perú, Timor-Leste, Sierra Leone, and Chad.

Judith Dueck
Judith Dueck has made presentations on information access, technology, education & human rights in many parts of the world. An award winning researcher, author of a book on censorship, and co-author of practical books on human rights documentation, she has been involved with HURIDOCS, a human rights network, since 1988 as task force leader and current vice chair of the board. She is a strong contributor to the establishment and development of a multilingual (77 languages) human rights search engine - full text searching and indexing of 4500 human rights organizations in 168 countries. www.hurisearch.org. She is in on the Amnesty International Board, has worked in West Bank as head of Al Haq, done consultancies with the OSCE, and trained international NGOs.

Ahmed Motala
Ahmed Motala is a human rights activist and lawyer who has worked at a range of South African and international organisations over the past 20 years. He has contributed to a few books on human rights in Africa and has made presentations at numerous conferences and workshops. He currently lives in Geneva, Switzerland, and works for the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Hal Roberts
Hal Roberts is the long time geek in/out of residence at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School. He is currently doing research in the areas of internet filtering circumvention, botnet and other grey forms of surveillance, and analysis of main stream and new/citizen media. Hal has worked on the technical side of many Berkman projects over the years, including H2O, Weblogs at Harvard Law, and Global Voices Online.

Marek Tuszynski
Marek Tuszynski is co-founder and partner of the Tactical Technology Collective. In the 1990s Marek worked as the director of the Internet Program for the Stefan Batory Foundation, based in Warsaw. He was also a board member of Klon/Jawor (a research and infrastructure NGO), founder/board member of the International Contemporary Art Network based in Amsterdam and The Second Hand Bank (an NGO that refurbishes and redistributes electronic equipment). He has worked extensively as an international consultant for civil society and art-based projects including the Information Program of the Open Society Institute and the King Baudouin Foundation in Belgium on the "Improvement of Inter Ethnic Relations" program.

Alison Cornyn
Alison Cornyn is an artist, founding partner and Director of Picture Projects. Her installation and video work as well as curatorial projects have been exhibited in Europe, South America and the U.S. She has worked as an art director on films in Los Angeles and New York and has extensive experience in interactive and web design as well as in building online communities. Cornyn produced an international, online dialogue for The New York Times, “Bosnia: Uncertain Paths to Peace” (1997) – the first website to be nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. She has taught at City College and guest lectured about digital documentaries at New York University and other institutions. Cornyn curated b/t*, a new media show at The Museum of Contemporary Art in Jacksonville, Fl (1998). The exhibition was part of the Boston Cyberarts Festival in 2001. She has a BA from Connecticut College, a Masters in Interactive Telecommunications from NYU and an MFA from Hunter College. She was an artist in the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program, 2000–01.

Ken Goldberg
Ken Goldberg is an artist and professor of engineering at UC Berkeley, where he is Director of the Berkeley Center for New Media. Goldberg's art installations, such as the Telegarden, have been exhibited at the Whitney Biennial, Venice Biennale, Pompidou Center (Paris), Walker Art Center, Ars Electronica (Linz, Austria), ZKM (Karlsruhe), ICC Biennale (Tokyo), Kwangju Biennale (Seoul), Artists Space, and The Kitchen (New York). Goldberg is Founding Director of Berkeley's Art, Technology, and Culture Colloquium and has held visiting positions at San Francisco Art Institute, MIT Media Lab, and Pasadena Art Center. The Tribe, a short film he co-wrote with his wife Tiffany Shlain, was selected for over 100 film festivals including Sundance, Tribeca, and Rotterdam. Ballet Mori, a multi-media project he developed to commemorate the 1906 Earthquake, was performed by the San Francisco Ballet at the San Francisco Opera House. He holds a PhD in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University and is editor of several books, including The Robot in the Garden: Telerobotics and Telepistemology in the Age of the Internet (MIT Press, 2000).

Andrew Schlussel
Andrew Schlussel applies his experience in filmmaking, animation, and visual effects to his career in education. He has taught 3D computer graphics classes using Maya at Pixar Animation Studios, is a member of the Visual Effects Society, and is the co-author of Maya Visual Quickstart Guide published by Peachpit Press. Before joining Ex’pression College for Digital Arts where he is currently the Director of the Animation & Visual Effects Program, he taught at NYU School of Continuing Education and The Academy of Art University in San Francisco. In 2007 he travelled to Myanmar (Burma) to train local people on 3D computer animation for social marketing in the fight against AIDS. More recently he was the Director of Photography on a feature film called "Sisu", a historical narrative set in Saskatchewan, Canada due for a Spring 2009 release.

Suzanne Seggerman
Suzanne Seggerman is co-founder and president of Games for Change (G4C), a non-profit organization founded in 2004, focused on the use of video games for social change, and a blogger for the Huffington Post. G4C is working with the MacArthur Foundation, Microsoft, mTV, and Participant Productions, and has regional groups in various cities in the U.S. and overseas. The premise behind G4C is that video games are a new and evolving cultural form and educational tool, and can and should be used to address important social issues.

Peggy Weil
Peggy Weil, Visiting Assistant Professor, USC-SCA Interactive Media Division, is a digital media artist and designer focusing on interactive and immersive design. As a member of the original Architecture Machine Group (now the M.I.T. Media Lab) she worked on pioneering interactive projects going on to create titles for The Voyager Company, Broderbund, Electronic Arts, Von Holtzbrinck and Ravensburger Interactive including the award winning titles, A Silly Noisy House and Moving Puzzle. She was creative producer and designer for the Redistricting Game, a USC Annenberg Center sponsored project to increase voter awareness about congressional redistricting. Current projects include Gone Gitmo, a virtual installation of Guantánamo Prison and Mauerkrankheit (Wallsickness), a visualization of the world's border fences.

CORPORATE RESPONSIBILITY AND COMPLICITY

Bennett Freeman
As Senior Vice President of the Calvert Group, Social Research and Policy of the Calvert Group, Bennett Freeman leads the social, environmental and governance research, analysis, policy and advocacy work of the largest family of socially responsible mutual funds in the U.S. based in Bethesda. MD. He directs the Social Research Department of twenty analysts and other staff, and serves on the Management Committee of this private asset management company with $13 billion in assets. Freeman serves on the Board of Directors of Oxfam America, the International Board of the Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (representing Oxfam), the Governing Board of the Revenue Watch Institute, the Board of the Institute for Business and Human Rights, and the Board of the Genocide Intervention Network. A member of the Council on Foreign Relations, he is also a frequent speaker and media commentator on corporate responsibility, human rights and U.S. foreign policy.

Leslie Harris
Leslie Harris is the President and CEO of the Center for Democracy & Technology. Ms. Harris has over two decades of experience as a civil liberties, technology and Internet lawyer, public policy advocate and strategist in Washington. She testifies before Congress on issues related to technology, the Internet and civil liberties and writes, speaks on Internet issues and is regular contributor to several online publications and blogs. Prior to joining CDT, Ms. Harris was the founder and president of Leslie Harris & Associates, a public policy firm committed to harnessing the power of new information technologies for public good. In that capacity, Ms. Harris played a leading role in shaping Internet legislation.

Dunstan Hope
Dunstan works with a diverse range of companies—including Internet, software, telecommunications, and consumer electronics companies—on corporate responsibility issues such as human rights, climate change, reporting, sustainability strategy, and stakeholder engagement. Since 2006, Dunstan facilitated the multi-stakeholder process to develop global principles on freedom of expression and privacy, which included a diverse mix of companies, civil society organizations, academics, and investors. This led to the launch of the Global Network Initiative in October 2008. Dunstan also facilitated the Electronic Industry Citizenship Coalition Implementation Group, a collaboration among more than 30 information and communications technology companies to improve conditions in their supply chains. In addition, Dunstan was directly involved in the creation of the G3 Global Reporting Initiative Guidelines and worked closely with GE through the creation of its first three sustainability reports. Prior to joining Business for Social Responsibility in 2004, Dunstan was part of British Telecommunications' corporate responsibility team.

Colin Maclay
Colin M. Maclay is the Managing Director of the Berkman Center, where he is privileged to work in diverse capacities with its faculty, staff, fellows and extended community to realize its ambitious goals. His broad aim is to integrate information and communication technologies (ICTs) with social and economic development, focusing on the changes Internet technologies foster in society, policy and institutions. Both as Co-founder of the Information Technologies Group at Harvard’s Center for International Development and at Berkman, Maclay’s research has paired hands-on multi stakeholder collaborations with the generation of data that reveal trends, challenges and opportunities for the integration of ICTs in the developing world. Colin has worked extensively in India, Latin America and at the international level on ICT policy for the underserved, developing and implementing research projects on topics including rural ICT access, ICTs in education, entrepreneurship, telecommunications infrastructure and policy, electronic government, and IT Enabled Services. He has a particular interest in leveraging universities’ unique capacity to engage in varied ICT policy and impact research and dialogue, and conduct technology research and development. Outside Harvard, he is a fellow at the University of Washington’s Center for Internet Studies, Chairman of the Sports for Development Foundation, and Advisor to the World Computer Exchange. Colin’s studies have taken him to the University of Wisconsin at Madison, the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and Northeastern University.

Deirdre Mulligan
Deirdre K. Mulligan is Assistant Professor in the UC Berkeley School of Information. She comes to the I School from the School of Law (Boalt Hall), where she was a clinical professor of law and the director of the Samuelson Law, Technology & Public Policy Clinic. She served previously as staff counsel at the Center for Democracy & Technology in Washington. Professor Mulligan’s current research agenda focuses on information privacy and security. Current projects include qualitative interviews to understand the institutionalization and management of privacy within corporate America, and role of law in corporate information security policy and practice. Other areas of current research include digital rights management technology and privacy and security issues in sensor networks and visual surveillance systems, and alternative legal strategies to advance network security.

Michael Samway
Michael Samway is Vice President and Deputy General Counsel at Yahoo! Under his leadership, the company is a participant in the Global Network Initiative, a joint effort between technology and human rights organizations to protect free speech and privacy for those in restrictive governments.

Nicole Wong
Nicole Wong is Associate General Counsel for Products and Intellectual Property at Google. Prior to joining Google, Nicole was a partner at the law firm of Perkins Coie, LLP, where she led a team of attorneys specializing in Internet law, including online content regulation, intellectual property, privacy, security and eCommerce. In addition to her practice, Nicole is a frequent speaker and author on issues related to law and technology. She previously served as co-chair of the Practising Law Institute’s Internet Law Institute and as an adjunct professor at the University of San Francisco School of Law where she taught media law. Nicole speaks at national and international conferences regarding Internet issues and, in April 2000, testified before the House of Representatives regarding the Fourth Amendment and the Internet. She received her law degree and a Master’s degree in Journalism from the UC Berkeley.

Luis Fondebrider
Luis Fondebrider is an Argentine forensic anthropologist, co-founder and current president of the the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team (EAAF), an international human rights organization founded in 1984 with headquarters in Buenos Aires, Argentina and a span of work across 40 countries. Through the application of forensic anthropology and archaeology, genetics, and related sciences, and in collaboration with victims’ relatives and investigative bodies, EAAF sheds light human rights violations, thus contributing to the search for truth, justice, reparation, and prevention of further violations. Team members serve as expert witnesses, technical consultants, and train forensic experts to continue work in their own countries. Luis specializes in the historical investigation of cases of political violence, archaeological exhumation of individual and mass graves, and analysis of human remains in order to identify them and to help to establish the cause of death. In addition, he also teaches forensic anthropology at the annual course of Legal Medicine of the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Buenos Aires.

Lance Gima
Lance Gima has been a practicing Criminalist for almost 34 years, working for the CA Department of Justice until his retirement in May of this year. He has been very active in drafting legislation, several of which have become law. Lance and his colleague, Dr. Cristian Orrego founded a volunteer organization called the Alliance of Forensic Scientists for Human Rights and Humanitarian Investigations. Lance is a member of the UC Berkeley Human Rights Center Advisory Board and has partnered with the Physicians for Human Rights on a project utilizing DNA technology to reunite families separated in El Salvador’s civil war. Lance has served on Chile’s Presidential Commission on DNA established to assist Chile in identifying the human remains of the "disappeared." Currently Lance is working with Chile’s Forensic Genetics Laboratory to prepare them for accreditation.

Ute Hofmeister
Ute Hofmeister is the Forensic Advisor at the Assistance Division of the ICRC (International Committee of the Red Cross), based in Geneva. Since 1995 she has worked internationally as forensic specialist for international organizations and for local teams in a variety of contexts - mainly in Latin America and the Balkans - in the field of human rights and humanitarian applications of forensic anthropology, before joining the ICRC in 2005. Ute Hofmeister has specialized in forensic archaeology, documentation and management of forensic data. She has developed data management applications for forensic anthropology and investigations into Missing Person for the EAAF (Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team) and ICMP (International Commission on Missing Persons). Among other things, she is currently responsible for the ICRC's data management tool for forensic investigations and human identification especially for post conflict and developing country contexts.

Thomas Parsons
Dr. Thomas Parsons is Director of Forensic Services at the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP), a position he has held since. He has served on the Scientific Advisory Board of the ICMP since 2000, and in 2005 was appointed Chairman of the ICMP Steering Committee on Forensic Sciences. Before joining ICMP, Dr. Parsons was Chief Scientist at the U.S. Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory (AFDIL), where he had worked since 1994, and where one of his primary roles was to direct the AFDIL Research Section. He is also an adjunct faculty member in the Department of Genetics and the Department of Forensic Sciences at the George Washington University. Since September 2001, Dr. Parsons has served on a (U.S.) National Institute of Justice expert advisory panel for the World Trade Center DNA identification efforts, and is currently a member of the expert panel advising on DNA identification for the Hurricane Katrina disaster. His undergraduate degree was in Physics from the University of Chicago, and he received a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the University of Washington in 1989.

Eric Stover
Eric Stover is Faculty Director of the Human Rights Center and Adjunct Professor of Law and Public Health at UC Berkeley. In the early 1990s, Stover took part in conducting the first research on the social and medical consequences of land mines in Cambodia and other post-war countries. During the wars in Croatia and Bosnia, he served on several medico-legal investigations as an "Expert on Mission" to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague. He conducted a survey of mass graves throughout Rwanda for the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in 1995. His most recent books include A Village Destroyed, May 14, 1999: War Crimes in Kosovo (with Fred Abrahams and Gilles Peress); My Neighbor, My Enemy: Justice and Community in the Aftermath of Mass Atrocity (edited, with Harvey Weinstein); and The Witnesses: War Crimes and the Promise of Justice in The Hague.

Mark Hanis
Mark Hanis is the Founder and President of the Genocide Intervention Network (GI-Net). GI-Net’s mission is to empower individuals and communities with the tools to prevent and stop genocide.
GI-Net will change the way the United States and the international community respond to the world’s worst crime. GI-Net’s aim is to recruit a committed and diverse group of individuals and communities to form an active network that realizes the “never” in “never again.” GI-Net members educate their communities, lobby their elected officials and fundraise directly for civilian protection. Currently, their work is focused on ending the ongoing genocide in Darfur, Sudan, where more than 400,000 people have been killed and over 2.5 million have been displaced; providing material support for peacekeepers in the region; and organizing political action campaigns for a more robust civilian protection force.

Jason Rosenthal
Jason Rosenthal is Senior Vice President of Business Operations at Ning, Inc. where he is responsible for all outbound and customer facing activities at the company. Previously, Rosenthal was Vice President of HP Software's Business Service Automation product line which encompasses the former Opsware product portfolio (acquired by HP for $1.6B) and leading solutions in the storage management, desktop management, and mobile device management space. Rosenthal holds a BA in history from Pomona College where he also serves on the board of trustees and he received his MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Susan Tenby
Susan Tenby is Senior Manager for Online Community Development at TechSoup Global and leads an active community of nonprofit staff and volunteers in Second Life. She frequently speaks at conferences and has testified before Congress about work in virtual worlds.

Eric Volz
Eric Volz is an American who was falsely accused and ultimately convicted to a 30 year sentence for rape and murder in Nicaragua in Nov 2006. From http://www.friendsorericvolz.com, a website created in his mother’s living room, a phenomenal world-wide movement emerged that brought together the international community in support of human rights by leveraging the social networking tools of the web to create solidarity and fight for justice. The growth of this community not only sustained Eric in jail but eventually caught the attention of international headlines, pressuring the highest levels of both the US and Nicaraguan governments to resolve the matter and bringing about his release from prison in late December 2007. Eric is now working to launch a SOS Strategy Center designed to assist primarily (but not limited to) citizens of the United States and Puerto Rico who find themselves in trouble abroad. Specific to the work of the SOS Strategy Center are cases that have political undertones, which complicate the ability to secure a fair trial and due process. Read the interview with NetSquared's Alexsteed.

Ken Banks
Ken Banks, founder of kiwanja.net, devotes himself to the application of mobile technology for positive social and environmental change in the developing world, and has spent the last 15 years working on projects in Africa. Recently, his research resulted in the development of FrontlineSMS, a field communication system designed to empower grassroots non-profit organisations. Ken graduated from Sussex University with honours in Social Anthropology with Development Studies, and was awarded a Reuters Digital Vision Fellowship in 2006, and named a Pop!Tech Social Innovation Fellow in 2008. Ken's work has been supported by the MacArthur Foundation and Open Society Institute, and he is the current recipient of a grant from the Hewlett Foundation. Further details of Ken's wider work are available on his website at www.kiwanja.net

Rose Donna
Rose Donna leads DataDyne.org's consulting efforts, providing a range of organizations with customized ICT solutions that meet their needs and match their resources. As Project Manager for information systems and communications for the American Red Cross, she led the organization's international services division in the practical application of database systems, handheld computing, and wireless technologies, particularly in disaster settings.

Robert Kirkpatrick
Robert Kirkpatrick is an expert in the design and use of technology to facilitate cross-organizational collaboration in austere field environments, developing countries, and sudden-onset emergencies. He has spent more than 12 years in collaboration technology, developing systems for health data collection, disaster relief, NGO field security, telemedicine, conflict mediation and civil-military cooperation. His work with technology industry partners, government agencies, and international humanitarian organizations has explored ways that the design of virtual interaction environments may influence trust-building, information sharing, and joint decision-making across technical, organizational, and cultural boundaries. Robert co-founded and led solutions development for two pioneering humanitarian technology teams, first at Groove Networks, and later at Microsoft. In 2003, Robert worked in Baghdad to improve coordination between members of the Coalition Provisional Authority and Iraqi ministries of Health, Finance, Human Rights, and Communications. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Robert provided technology support to US Navy, National Guard, and first responders in New Orleans and Waveland, Mississippi. Following the devastating earthquake in 2005, Robert worked in Muzaffarabad, Kashmir with several relief organizations designing tools for data collection and supply logistics. He participated in two missions in northern and central Afghanistan (2006, 2007) prototyping distributed collaboration and data integration technologies to improve information flow for NGOs involved in telemedicine support and the Afghan National Solidarity Program.

Eric Hersman
Blogger (AfriGadget, WhiteAfrican), geek and power networker Erik Hersman is a key member of the African blog revolution. As a builder of Ushahidi, he helps expand the power of everyday people to share vital news via text. He grew up in Kenya and Sudan and is, as he puts it, "one of those guys who's much more 'at home' in Africa." From his home in the U.S., he keeps two influential blogs: WhiteAfrican, where he writes about technology on the African continent, and AfriGadget, a group blog that celebrates African ingenuity. During the Kenyan post-election crisis of 2007–08, Hersman helped create the website Ushahidi, a place to report incidents of violence via the web and texts.

Phuong Pham
Phuong Pham is Director of Research at the Human Rights Center and Adjunct Associate Professor at Tulane University's Payson Center for International Development. She completed a survey on trauma, PSTD, justice, and reconciliation as part of the Human Rights Center's project, "Communities in Crisis: Justice, Accountability and Social Reconstruction in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia." She is a founding member of the Initiative on Vulnerable Populations and conducts research in northern Uganda, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Cambodia, and other areas affected by mass violence.

Steve Wright
Prior to joining the Salesforce.com Foundation, Steve Wright worked for thirteen years in K12 education and technology. He was a high school administrator and a classroom teacher for nine years, beginning with the Peace Corps in Micronesia. Steve joined Salesforce.com Foundation in September 2000, initially working to help youth-serving organizations maintain effective IT for both administrative and programmatic purposes. In an effort to create greater scale, Steve led the effort to build a robust product donation program. Now the salesforce.com Foundation has donated the force.com data management platform to over 4,000 organizations in 55 countries. It is now Steve's goal, and the goal of the salesforce.com Foundation, to measurably increase the efficacy of the global social sector through effective data management.

Ron Bigler
Ron Bigler has been working as a Senior Strategist for Online Advocacy and Technology for Human Rights First since 2004. He helped the organization develop and implement online campaigns around its End Torture, Darfur, and Iraqi Refguees campaigns that have: recruited more than 150,000 online activists; generated more than $500,000 in revenue; and expanded the organization's online presence through the use of email advocacy, keyword search marketing, online petitions, blogs, online video, and social networking platforms.

Kirk Boyd
Kirk Boyd is Executive Director of the 2048 Project at UC Berkeley School of Law. He holds a bachelor’s degree in political science from UC Santa Barbara, as well as a JD, LLM, and JSD from UC Berkeley. He has been a litigator with Morrison & Forester and a partner in the firm Boyd, Huffman, Williams and Urla, litigating primarily civil rights and environmental law cases in courts of all levels, including the United States Supreme Court. Kirk has taught at UC Santa Barbara and UC Berkeley, including courses on International Human Rights, International Law, Constitutional Law, Civil Rights and First Amendment.

David Sasaki
David Sasaki is the Director of Rising Voices, a global citizen media outreach initiative of Global Voices Online. He manages a portfolio of small-scale projects around the developing world that use citizen media to effect social change. Prior to his current focus on outreach he served as Global Voices' Latin America Regional Editor, monitoring the Latin American blogosphere, highlighting key content and translating select posts from Spanish to English. Sasaki transitioned into online journalism after working as a freelance web developer and English instructor in Monterrey, Mexico. He now splits his time and residence between North and Latin America and writes frequently at Rising Voices, Global Voices, and on his personal weblog.

Xiao Qiang
Xiao Qiang is Director of China Internet Project and an adjunct professor at the Graduate School of Journalism, UC Berkeley. He is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of China Digital Times, a bilingual collaborative China news website. A theoretical physicist by training, Xiao Qiang became a full-time human rights activist after the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. He was the Executive Director of the New York-based NGO Human Rights in China from 1991 to 2002. Xiao has published numerous articles in the International Herald Tribune, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Le Monde, Der Spiegel, Los Angeles Times, South China Morning Post and other major publications. Xiao is a recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship in 2001. Xiao teaches classes on Participatory Media/Collective Action and Covering China at both the School of Information and the Graduate School of Journalism. He also researches and writes about state online censorship and propaganda, emerging "Citizen Blogging" movement, and network activism in Chinese cyberspace. In Fall 2003, Xiao launched China Digital Times to explore how to apply Web 2.0 technologies to aggregate, interpret, and contextualize the news about China.

Jay Harris
Jay Harris is the publisher of San Francisco-based Mother Jones and president of its non-profit parent, the Foundation for National Progress. Mother Jones is perhaps best known for its muckraking investigative magazine (winner of a 2008 National Magazine Award for General Excellence), but the 2007 opening of a 7-reporter Washington, D.C., bureau has helped make MotherJones.com a player in the online news world as well. Today, with the profitability of traditional news businesses under extreme pressure, Mother Jones’ “hybrid” model – blending print with web and traditional ad and subscription revenues with philanthropic contributions – is drawing national attention from those who care about the future of the news. Jay is a founder and co-chair of coordinating group of The Media Consortium, a network of independent and progressive news organizations. He serves on the boards of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and the First Amendment Coalition and on the advisory board of Free Speech TV. Jay is a frequent speaker on media issues.

Emma Daly
Emma Daly has been Communications Director at Human Rights Watch since July 2007, and worked as Press Director from November 2005. Before joining Human Rights Watch she spent 18 years as a journalist, mostly as a foreign correspondent, working for the New York Times, the Independent, Newsweek, the Observer and Reuters, among others. She has contributed to several books including “Secrets of the Press – the Penguin Book of Journalism” and “Crimes of War: What the Public Should Know.”

Jacquelline Fuller
Jacquelline Fuller joined Google.org in April 2007 as Director of Advocacy and Communications. She oversees advocacy and communications for Google.org and Google Inc.'s environmental initiatives. Jacquelline previously served as Deputy Director of Global Health at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, where she was a member of the senior management team guiding efforts to influence public policy on behalf of Gates Foundation issues and grantees. In 2004-2005, Jacquelline and her family moved to Delhi, India where she helped to launch a $300 million HIV prevention initiative known as Avahan. Jacquelline received her BA in political science and from UCLA and a Masters in Public Policy from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. She serves on the Board of the Harvey Fellows and International Justice Mission. She is a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and currently resides in Orinda, California.

Steve Daigneault
Steve Daigneault has been the Managing Director for Internet Communications at Amnesty International USA since May 2006. He directs all of AIUSA's online work including strategy, messaging, technology, and tactics. He has worked for progressive advocacy organizations either directly or as a consultant for 15 years. His past employers and clients include: the U.S. Holocaust Museum, the Audubon Society, US Fund for UNICEF, the Opportunity Agenda, the Aspen Institute and the United Nations Association of the U.S.A.

Jonathan Hutson
Jonathan Hutson, Chief Communications Officer at Physicians for Human Rights, has a strong track record creating traditional and new media strategies for national organizations during dynamic periods of growth. Beginning his career as a muckraking investigative journalist, Jonathan developed a passion for organizing and blogging on issues of social justice and environmental health. Prior to joining PHR, Jonathan created and led Dialogues Online: Racial Healing in Your Hometown, a public/private partnership between America Online and the Western Justice Center Foundation. He then served as Communications Director for Public Justice, a national public interest law firm in Washington, D.C., and for Amory Lovins’ Rocky Mountain Institute. His latest project for PHR is DarfuriWomen.org, which lets users view first-hand narratives from refugee women and send them a reply. Follow him on Twitter: @jhutsontweet.

Brett Solomon
Brett Solomon is Campaign Director for Australia at Avaaz.org, a global grassroots web movement that seeks to have an impact on global politics. Solomon completed a law degree at the University of Sydney, promoted the first International Youth Parliament and has worked for Community Aid Abroad and Amnesty International Australia. He served as Executive Director of GetUp!, an online activist community established in 2005 after the model of MoveOn.org.