Alex HowardAlexander B. Howard is an independent writer and open government advocate based in Washington, DC. Howard has been honored twice by The Washingtonian Magazine as one of Washington’s “TechTitans,” which recognized him as a “respected trend-spotter and chronicler of government’s use of new media.”
Over the years, Howard has appeared on-air as an analyst for All Things Considered, Marketplace, MSNBC, WHYY, WAMU, Federal News Radio, Al Jazeera English, and America, Washington Post TV, WJLA and a guest on The Kojo Nnamdi Show, and has been quoted in hundreds of print, broadcast, radio and digital publications.
Howard has held fellowships at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia Journalism School and the Networked Transparency Policy Project in the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
Howard is the former deputy director of the Sunlight Foundation, where he wore a dozen different hats after being appointed to help lead the “restartup” of one of the world’s preeminent nonpartisan open government nonprofits during the presidential transition and the first sixteen months of the Trump administration.
The projects that he created and nurtured at Sunlight ranged from building on its legacy as a transparency watchdog to tracking Trump’s conflicts of interest and reporting on the ongoing corruption of the presidency to the Web Integrity Project.
Howard started and led numerous initiatives, from civic engagement to strategic advocacy. He edited and published watchdog journalism that held the Trump White House accountable. He managed and grew Sunlight’s social media accounts, speaking truth to power at @SunFoundation and engaging a global audience. He acted as expert source of analysis for media around the world, delivering keynote speeches in national capitols from Europe to South America. And he worked in coalitions on open government reform efforts in cities, states and nations around the world. While at Sunlight, he helped draft the Honest Ads Act, which would make online political ads transparent. The bill’s framework been adopted, adapted and enacted in states, endorsed by Facebook and Twitter, and used as a standard for transparency by those tech companies and Google.
Previous to taking a leadership role, Howard was a senior analyst at Sunlight, where he led the foundation’s federal transparency work, with issues covering the gamut of digital government, open government data, press freedom, net neutrality, social media, identity and privacy.
Alexander MacgillivrayAlexander Macgillivray, also know as “amac,” is curious about many things including law, policy, government, decision making, the Internet, algorithms, social justice, access to information, and the intersection of all of those.
He was United States Deputy Chief Technology Officer for the last two plus years of the Obama Administration. He was Twitter‘s General Counsel, and head of Corporate Development, Public Policy, Communications, and Trust & Safety. Before that he was Deputy General Counsel at Google and created the Product Counsel team. He has served on the board of the Campaign for the Female Education (CAMFED) USA, was one of the early Berkman Klein Center folks, was certified as a First Grade Teacher by the State of New Jersey, and studied Reasoning & Decision Making as an undergraduate.
These days he is doing a bunch of coding, writing, and short burst projects with organizations thinking about what they should be doing next.
Alice StollmeyerAlice Stollmeyer, Executive Director of Defending Democracy, is a Digital Advocacy Strategist. She has lived and worked in Paris, Amsterdam and Brussels, the heart of the European Union.
With a solid background in social science, science studies and communication, in 2012 Alice founded her own consultancy @StollmeyerEU, which specialises in EU public affairs, political communications and digital advocacy. She has been ranked a top digital EU influencer ever since.
In 2016 @StollmeyerEU broadened its portfolio: previously focused on energy and climate policies, now its focus is politics, digital developments and European values like democracy, human rights and rule of law.
In 2017 @StollmeyerEU succesfully accomplished a major assignment as interim Communications Director at the Women Political Leaders Global Forum.
On 8 November 2017, Alice Stollmeyer founded Defending Democracy: an independent, nonpartisan initiative defending democracy from internal and external threats: illiberalism and hybrid war are two sides of the same coin.
Defending Democracy has created several communities, two of which also meet offline: Defenders of Democracy defend Article 2 of the EU Treaty as the soul of the European Union; they organise monthly Democracy Drinks to grow and support a wider community of democracy defenders.
Avery GardinerAvery Gardiner is the Senior Fellow for Competition, Data, and Power at the Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT). Her work examines the competition policy and legal implications of the accumulation of data in the United States and worldwide. She has particular interests in dynamic competition and consumer protection.
Prior to joining CDT, Avery was an in-house competition lawyer for Verizon, where she focused on strategy, mergers, and business conduct. She also served in the Antitrust Division at the Department of Justice as both a Trial Attorney and Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust, where her work included representing the U.S. government in court, litigating merger cases, investigating allegations of anti-competitive conduct, and advising on case resolutions. She also worked at the law firms of Kirkland & Ellis and WilmerHale, where she advised clients and litigated cases for technology, pharmaceuticals, logistics, and many other clients.
Avery began her career as a consultant with McKinsey & Company. In addition to her competition and antitrust work, she is also a former co-president at the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence. She has appeared extensively in media, including Fox News, NPR, the New York Times, Associated Press, Washington Post, and others. She is a graduate of Harvard University and Harvard Law School. Avery lives in Washington, DC with her two daughters.
Baroness Beeban KidronBaroness Beeban Kidron OBE, is the Founder of 5Rights. She is a Crossbench member of the House of Lords and sits on the Communications Committee. She is a Commissioner on the UN Broadband Commission for Sustainable Development; a member of the Child Dignity Alliance Working Group; a member of the Royal Foundation’s Taskforce on the Prevention of Cyberbullying; sits on the Council on Extended Intelligence; and is a co-Founder of the educational charity Into Film, where she remains a trustee. For 35 years she has worked as an award-winning film director and producer in the UK and US.
Bishop GarrisonBishop Garrison (@BishopGarrison) is interim executive director of Truman Center for National Policy and Truman National Security Project. He is also a member of the board at Council for a Livable World. He graduated from West Point in 2002 and served two deployments in Iraq in the Army. He served in national security positions in the Obama Administration and most recently served as deputy foreign policy advisor on the Clinton campaign. Views expressed are his own.
Bryan JonesBryan Jones is an entrepreneur and technologist who has started several companies and been issued multiple technology-based patents. He is current the Managing Partner of Strive and Solve Ventures, and the Chairman of Stand Up Republic. Previously he co-founded GetHealthy, b.well Health, and Collider Media. While at UT, Jones was a 21-time All-American swimmer and captained the 2000 NCAA Championship team. He has served as a board member of several organizations, including The Athletes Village, TeamTopia, StandUp Republic, the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce, PeopleFund, USA Swimming, The Seton Fifty, and the Texas Exes.
Opinions expressed here are entirely his own.
Dana MartensDana Martens is a designer, creative technologist, maker, educator, life-long student and geek working to educate and empower communities to embrace the potential of speculative practice for better understanding how emerging technologies can create future social impact.
They currently work as a UX Designer at Teach for America by day and an Adjunct Professor at Parsons School of Design by night, designing educational initiatives and consulting on the role of technology-led design for social impact entrepreneurship.
In their spare time, Dana pursues their passion for speculative practice by co-organizing the Speculative Futures NYC Meetup, and is currently working to launch NYC's first Speculative Design conference, PRIMER19, this coming June. Dana also publishes SciFly, a weekly newsletter curating NYC's best speculative design, fiction, art, and emerging technology events.
Dana holds a Bachelor of Arts cum laude in Economics from Smith College and Master of Fine Arts with honors in Design + Technology from Parsons School of Design.
Dipayan GhoshDipayan Ghosh was a fellow across New America’s Public Interest Technology initiative and the Open Technology Institute, where he focused on public policy issues at the intersection of privacy, security, and civil rights. Ghosh is the Pozen Fellow at the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, where he works on digital privacy, artificial intelligence, and civil rights.
A computer scientist and privacy engineer by training, Ghosh joined New America from Facebook, where he was a privacy & public policy advisor. At Facebook, Ghosh helped lead strategic efforts to address public concerns around privacy and other issues in the company’s leading social media products and Internet platforms. He further helped coordinate and develop the company’s public policy positions on matters related to privacy, telecommunications policy, and algorithmic ethics.
Prior to his time at Facebook, Ghosh was a technology policy advisor at the White House during the Obama Administration. Ghosh served across the Office of Science & Technology Policy and the National Economic Council, where he supported the Administration’s work to advance progressive policy initiatives at the heart of the digital economy. Among other efforts, Ghosh supported the Administration’s work to advance policy concerning Big Data’s impact on consumer privacy; algorithmic discrimination and its interaction with civil rights; internet policy including strong net neutrality principles; and spectrum issues.
Ghosh received a Ph.D. in electrical engineering & computer science at Cornell University, and later completed postdoctoral study in the same field at the University of California, Berkeley. His doctoral thesis explores the technical requirements for data privacy in cyber-physical systems, as well as the game theoretic conditions under which corporations and consumers can best be encouraged to adopt strong privacy standards. Ghosh holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the University of Connecticut. In 2016, Forbes Magazine recognized Ghosh as one of the “30 Under 30” leaders in Law & Policy.
Ellen P. GoodmanEllen P. Goodman is a professor at Rutgers Law School where she co-directs and co-founded the Rutgers Institute for Information Policy & Law (RIIPL). Goodman has published widely on media and telecoms law, smart cities and the Internet of Things, freedom of expression, and advertising law. She is currently a Pratt Fund grantee for a project relating to algorithmic transparency and has served in the Obama Administration as a Distinguished Visiting Scholar with the Federal Communications Commission. Goodman has also been a visiting scholar at the London School of Economics and the University of Pennsylvania, and a recipient of Ford Foundation and Geraldine R. Dodge grants for work on advancing new public media models and public interest journalism. Prior to joining the Rutgers faculty, Goodman was a partner at the law firm of Covington & Burling LLP, where she practiced in the information technology area. She is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School, clerked for Judge Norma Shapiro on the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, and has three children.
Erik MartinErik was previously Senior Education Program Manager at Unity, and a Policy Advisor at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy during the Obama Administration. He is currently studying a masters in Social Science of the Internet at Oxford University.
Greta ByrumGreta Byrum was the director of the Resilient Communities program at New America, and now serves as Senior Fellow and advisor to the Resilient Communities team at New America NYC.
She is currently co-director of the Digital Equity Laboratory at The New School, a university center advancing digital equity through organizing, applies research, and policy strategy.
As director of the Resilient Communities program, Byrum led Resilient Networks NYC, a project supported by New York City's Economic Development Corporation. Resilient Networks provides training, tools, and equipment to community organizations in five Hurricane Sandy-impacted New York City neighborhoods so they can build storm-hardened local WiFi. The project is based on Byrum's earlier field research in New York, the Gulf Coast, and the Silicon Valley region showing that in disaster and emergency situations, local residents and community media organizations are often the most critical first responders.
Previously, Byrum provided leadership for the field team at New America's Open Technology Institute, co-developing the "Digital Stewardship" approach to community technology with partners in Detroit and Brooklyn. While at OTI, Byrum also produces a suite or recommendations for community-led broadband planning, developed an impact evaluation plan for the nationwide public-private partnership EveryoneOn, and contributed to evaluations of other broadband programs including Federal stimulus projects in Detroit and Philadelphia.
Byrum's public speaking includes keynotes for the Meeting of the Minds Summit and the American Planning Association's annual conference, featured talks for Futureshocks 2018 at the Museum of London, Bloomberg Live, MozFest 2017, Moogfest 2016, SXSW 2015, 2016, and 2018, Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society, MIT's Urban Risk Lab, the Net Inclusion Summit, the Lincoln Land Institute's Journalists Forum, the Personal Democracy Forum, and Marketplace Tech. Her writing on resilience and community technology has been featured in Politico, The Atlantic, Pacific Standard, Slate, Real Clear Policy, the International Journal of Communication, and the Journal of Community Informatics.
Byrum's other activities include micro-radio broadcasting, poetry, and art. As co-creator of the curatorial team dBfoundation, she has exhibited in New York, Los Angeles, and around the world. She holds an MS in urban planning from Columbia University and an MFA in poetry from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Greta was also a 2017 Loeb fellow with the Harvard Graduate School of Design, where she focused on democratizing communications systems for communities affected by climate change and systemic inequity. She current serves on the boards of the METRO New York Libraries Council and the New Harmony Earth Sanctuary.
Jeff KosseffJeff Kosseff is an Assistant Professor of Cybersecurity Law at the United States Naval Academy. He is the author of Cybersecurity Law (Wiley), the first comprehensive textbook on U.S. cybersecurity laws and regulations, and in spring 2019 will publish The Twenty-Six Words that Created the Internet, a nonfiction narrative history of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. His articles about cybersecurity and Internet law have appeared in Iowa Law Review, Wake Forest Law Review, IEEE Security & Privacy, Computer Law and Security Review, Columbia Science and Technology Law Review, and other publications. In October 2017, he testified about online sex trafficking and Section 230 before the House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, Homeland Security, and Investigations. In March 2017, he testified about Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act before the House Judiciary Committee.
Jeff has practiced cybersecurity and privacy law, and clerked for Judge Milan D. Smith, Jr. of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and for Judge Leonie M. Brinkema of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. He is a graduate of Georgetown University Law Center and the University of Michigan. Before becoming a lawyer, he was a journalist for The Oregonian and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for national reporting.
Joshua GeltzerJoshua Geltzer serves as the founding Executive Director of the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection as well as Visiting Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center. He is also an ASU Future of War Fellow at New America.
Geltzer served from 2015 to 2017 as Senior Director for Counterterrorism at the National Security Council staff, having served previously as Deputy Legal Advisor to the National Security Council and as Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for National Security at the U.S. Department of Justice. He also served as a law clerk to Justice Stephen Breyer of the U.S. Supreme Court and, before that, as a law clerk to Chief Judge Alex Kozinski of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Geltzer received his J.D. from Yale Law School, where he served as editor-in-chief of the Yale Law Journal, and his PhD in War Studies from King’s College London, where he was a Marshall Scholar. Before that, he attended Princeton University, majoring in the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.
He is the author of US Counter-Terrorism Strategy and al-Qaeda: Signalling and the Terrorist World-View, published by Routledge; and his work has appeared in The Atlantic, Foreign Policy, Parameters, Politico, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, the Journal of Constitutional Law, the Berkeley Journal of International Law, and the Washington Post.
Justin HendrixJustin Hendrix is Executive Director of NYC Media Lab, connecting media and tech companies with NYC universities to drive digital media innovation and entrepreneurship. Previously he was Vice President, Business Development & Innovation for The Economist. He holds a BA from the College of William & Mary and an MSc in Technology Commercialization from the McCombs School of Business, University of Texas at Austin. Follow him on Twitter @justinhendrix.
Opinions expressed here are entirely his own.
Karen KornbluhAmbassador Karen Kornbluh is Senior Fellow and Director Digital Innovation and Democracy Initiative, German Marshall Fund of the US, which works to help shape a future in which technology strengthens rather than undermines democratic values. This program contends with the challenge of online disinformation as well as other technology policy issues including 21st century jobs and innovation, democratic implications of frontier technologies, and cyber dimensions of national security. In addition, it will develop a framework for global transatlantic leadership on technology policy.
A leading voice at the intersection of digital and economic policy, technology, and foreign affairs, Kornbluh comes to GMF from the Council on Foreign Relations, where she was senior fellow for digital policy. Kornbluh served as policy director to Barack Obama during his term in the United States Senate and was the Obama administration’s ambassador to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) from 2009 until 2012. In this role she spearheaded development of the first global Internet Policymaking Principle and launched both the OECD's Gender Initiative and the Middle East-North Africa Women's Business Forum.
Kornbluh earlier served in the Clinton Administration as deputy chief of staff at the Treasury Department and in a number of senior positions at the Federal Communications Commission. She was on the Senate staff of John F. Kerry. In these positions she coordinated policy processes that developed key components of the emerging Internet policy framework.
In addition to her extensive government service, Kornbluh served as executive vice president for external affairs at data company Nielsen. At strategy firm Telesis, she consulted to Fortune 500 manufacturing companies. She began her career as an economist at forecasting firm Townsend-Greenspan.
Kornbluh was a visiting fellow at the Center for American Policy and a Markle Fellow and she served on the U.S. Federal Economic and Statistics Advisory Council; was a senior advisor to McKinsey on technology, a member of the World Economic Forum’s AI, IoT and Future of Trust Network, and co-chair of the Chamber of Commerce’s Digital Connect forum.
Her work on gender and family led to her founding the New America Foundation Work and Family Program, and writing on “The Family Trap” and “The Mommy Tax.” Her work on these issues was featured in a New York Times profile, Kornbluh’s writing has appeared in Foreign Affairs, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Atlantic Monthly, Democracy, and the Harvard Law and Policy Review, as well as several anthologies.
She continues to serve on the U.S. Broadcasting Board of Governors, and is a Mozilla Fellow and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Laura RosenbergerLaura Rosenberger is director of the Alliance for Securing Democracy and a senior fellow at The German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF). Before she joined GMF, she was foreign policy advisor for Hillary for America, where she coordinated development of the campaign’s national security policies, messaging, and strategy. Prior to that, she served in a range of positions at the State Department and the White House’s National Security Council (NSC). As chief of staff to Deputy Secretary of State Tony Blinken and earlier as then-Deputy National Security Advisor Blinken’s senior advisor, she counseled on the full range of national security policy. In her role at the NSC, she also managed the interagency Deputies Committee, the U.S. government’s senior-level interagency decision-making forum on our country’s most pressing national security issues.
Laura also has extensive background in the Asia-Pacific region, particularly Northeast Asia. She served as NSC director for China and Korea, managing and coordinating U.S. policy on China and the Korean Peninsula, and in a variety of positions focused on the Asia-Pacific region at the Department of State, including managing U.S.–China relations and addressing North Korea’s nuclear programs. She also served as special assistant to Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Bill Burns, advising him on Asia-Pacific affairs and on nonproliferation and arms control issues. Laura first joined the State Department as a Presidential Management Fellow.
She is a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations. She received her master’s degree in international peace and conflict resolution from American University’s School of International Service, and received her bachelors’ degrees with honors from Penn State University’s Schreyer Honors College in sociology, psychology, and women’s studies. She is originally from Pittsburgh, PA, and is an avid Steelers fan.
Marcus CareyMarcus J. Carey is currently the founder and CEO at Threatcare and has 20 years of cybersecurity experience. Marcus has worked in penetration testing, incident response, and digital forensics with federal agencies such as NSA, DC3, DIA, and DARPA. Marcus has applied for a patent on prior research related to information security and earned a Masters of Science in Network Security from Capitol College.
Melissa RyanMelissa Ryan writes Ctrl Alt-Right Delete, a weekly newsletter covering extremism and online toxicity. Previously she spent a decade leading digital campaigns for nonprofits and political races, including EMILY’s List, Barack Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign, and former Wisconsin senator Russ Feingold.
Michelle RichardsonMichelle Richardson is the Director of the Data and Privacy Project at the Center for Democracy & Technology. She is leading CDT’s efforts to create a user-centered internet. Her team engages companies and government officials to create policies and technical solutions that protect individual privacy, empower users, and advance social justice. Recognized by The Hill as one of the most influential nonprofits lobbyists in Washington, she has led left-right coalitions to defend privacy in the face of ever-expanding government authorities.
Renee DiRestaRenee DiResta (@noUpside) writes about discourse and the internet. She studies narrative manipulation as the director of research at New Knowledge, is a Mozilla fellow on media, misinformation and trust, and is affiliated with the Berkman-Klein Center at Harvard and the Data Science Institute at Columbia University. In past lives she has been on the founding team of supply chain logistics startup Haven, a venture capitalist at OATV, and a trader at Jane Street.
Robert L. McKenzieRobert L. McKenzie, PhD, is a senior fellow at New America and director of its Muslim Diaspora Initiative. McKenzie is a domestic and foreign policy analyst and scholar of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), with fifteen years of applied research and work experience for the U.S. government, private sector, and academia. An anthropologist by training, McKenzie is an expert in displaced persons, refugee resettlement and integration, and Arab and Muslim communities in the United States and Europe. McKenzie is an adjunct professor at Georgetown University and he has been a lecturer at Wayne State University (Detroit), a researcher at the American University in Cairo, and a visiting scholar at the University of Oxford.
Before joining New America, McKenzie was a visiting fellow and nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, where he focused on Muslim communities in the West and the Syrian refugee crisis. In his most recent government position, McKenzie served as senior advisor for countering violent extremism (CVE) at the U.S. Department of State. Prior to that position, McKenzie was project director and responsible for establishing and launching the Hedayah Center in Abu Dhabi—the world’s first-ever international center on CVE. While at the Hedayah Center, McKenzie had oversight of an eight million dollar budget, project controls, and staffing; drafted the Center’s strategy and programmatic initiatives; and conducted stakeholder engagement with senior officials in 15 capitals across the MENA region and Europe.
McKenzie has written for, appeared with, or been cited by: Al Jazeera, the Baltimore Sun; Bloomberg View; The Brookings Cafeteria Podcast; CNN; the Detroit Free Press; Foreign Policy in Focus; the Guardian; the New York Times; Share Radio; the Washington Post; and the Washington Times. In his latest book project McKenzie explores humanitarian assistance and policy solutions to protracted refugee situations in the Middle East.
McKenzie was born and raised in the Greater Detroit area. He earned a bachelor's in economics from Michigan State University, a master's in security studies and a graduate certificate in Arab Studies from Georgetown University, and a doctorate in anthropology from the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London.
Ryan HagemannRyan Hagemann is the senior director for policy at the Niskanen Center. He also oversees the organization’s work on technology policy. His policy expertise focuses on regulatory governance of emerging technologies, as well as a broader research portfolio that includes genetic modification and regenerative medicine, bioengineering and healthcare IT, artificial intelligence, autonomous vehicles, commercial drones, the Internet of Things, and other issues at the intersection of technology, regulation, and the digital economy. His work on “soft law” governance systems, autonomous vehicles, and commercial drones have been featured in numerous academic journals, and his research and comments have been cited by The New York Times, MIT Technology Review, and The Atlantic, among other outlets. He has been published in The Wall Street Journal, Wired, National Review, The Washington Examiner, U.S. News & World Report, The Hill, and elsewhere.
Ryan graduated from Boston University with a B.A. in international relations, foreign policy, and security studies and holds a Master’s of Public Policy in science and technology policy from George Mason University.
Sarah HuntSarah E. Hunt is the co-founder and CEO of the Joseph Rainey Center for Public Policy, a post-partisan 501(c)3 public policy research organization and leadership community of women, minorities, and mavericks, named after Joseph Rainey, a former slave who was the first African-American to serve in the United States House of Representatives.
Sarah's expertise is in clean energy and climate policy, intercultural political communication, and multi-jurisdiction issue advocacy. Her commentary on energy policy has appeared in Politico, the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Axios, E&E Newswire, and the Scientific American. Prior to co-founding the Rainey Center, Sarah launched clean energy and climate programs at the American Legislative Exchange Council and the Niskanen Center, respectively.
She began her career in politics as staff in the New Mexico and Oregon legislatures and formerly practiced political law at a boutique Oregon law firm. Sarah is the co-author of Oregon’s Ballot Measure 73, passed by popular referendum in 2010.
Sarah grew up homeschooled in Maryland and New Mexico with her eight younger siblings. Today, she volunteers her time as an advocate for the human rights of homeschool students. Her efforts to help young women escape abusive, fundamentalist homeschool circumstances was profiled by the Washington Post Magazine.
She is a graduate of the University of New Mexico (BA), Willamette University College of Law (JD), Georgetown University Law Center (LLM), and the George Washington Graduate School of Political Management (MPS).
Trooper SandersTrooper Sanders has worked across business, government, and philanthropy to advance solutions to critical social challenges in the United States and internationally. He currently runs a policy and partnerships advisory practice, Wise Whisper, that works with companies, non-profit organizations, and philanthropists. He is also a Rockefeller fellow at the Rockefeller Foundation focusing on artificial intelligence and equal opportunity, and the Internet of Things and middle class technology career paths.
Trooper served as a White House policy advisor during two administrations and worked on issues ranging from supporting military families, including setting up the public engagement campaign, Joining Forces, and shepherding a presidential study directive mobilizing non-defense federal agencies; to improving mental health, including mounting the first White House Conference on Mental Health that was a catalyst for policy and private sector action tackling stigma; and improving support for people with mental illness. Outside of government, he has helped build or lead initiatives addressing the childhood obesity epidemic and domestic economic security as a senior advisor at the William J. Clinton Foundation. In addition, he has led initiatives providing economic support to victims of disaster; making the workplace more supportive of time-crunched workers exercising their right to vote; and served as a policy and program officer for a campaign elevating the private sector’s role in international development. He has participated in a number of efforts strengthening the transatlantic relationship between the United States and Europe, including living in Germany as a Robert Bosch Foundation fellow.
From Detroit, Michigan, Trooper has a bachelor’s in International Political Economy from the University of Michigan, a master’s in Regulation (Financial and Commercial) from the London School of Economics where he wrote on intellectual property regulation and foreign direct investment, and an LLM (Computer and Communications Law) from the University of London. He is pursuing a doctorate in intelligence studies at the University of Leicester. He serves on the board of directors of the Alliance for a Healthier Generation and Girl Scouts of the USA, and is on the advisory board of Purdue University’s Military Family Research Institute. He chairs the board of the Emerging Markets Development Corporation, a non-profit connecting the financial services and retail sectors to opportunities in underserved communities.
Veronika VelchVeronika Velch is an Advocacy Director at Ridgley|Walsh. Veronika advises clients on strategic communications, message development and profile building. Veronika advises tech industry leaders. She is an expert in human rights campaigns.
Veronika Velch is an advocacy specialist, an expert in Ukrainian and Russian politics and has extensive experience with international human rights and political campaigns. At the age of 20, Veronika served as the youngest head of the Electoral Commission in Ukraine. Veronika then moved to the U.S. to work for Voice of America. She later took part in Ukraine’s Euromaidan Revolution of Dignity and led communications for the CHESNO Civil Movement to advance fair election practices in Ukraine. She also co-founded a Ukrainian national initiative, “Follow the Money”, advocating for political finance transparency.
Veronika holds a Master of Professional Studies degree in Advocacy in the Global Environment from The George Washington University. She received a PhD in International Relations from Yuriy Fedkovych Chernivtsi National University in Ukraine. She is fluent in Ukrainian and Russian and was recently named a recipient of the Mark and Debbie Kennedy Frontiers of Freedom Award for advocacy work protecting human rights around the world.
Zach GravesZach Graves is Head of Policy at the Lincoln Network, a technology and policy group headquartered in Silicon Valley. Zach’s work focuses on the intersection of technology and governance issues. Prior to Lincoln, he was founder and former director of the R Street Institute’s technology and innovation policy program. Prior to R Street, he worked at the Cato Institute and the America’s Future Foundation. He is currently also a Technology and Democracy Fellow at the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at Harvard Kennedy School, a visiting fellow at the National Security Institute at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School, and an associate fellow at the R Street Institute. He holds a master’s from the California Institute of the Arts and a bachelor’s from the University of California at Davis. Zach is married and lives in Washington, DC.