People

Audrey Tang is Taiwan’s digital minister in charge of social innovation. She is a software programmer known for revitalising the computer languages Perl and Haskell and building the online spreadsheet system EtherCalc in collaboration with Dan Bricklin. Audrey served on Taiwan’s National Development Council’s Open Data committee and K-12 curriculum committee, and led the country’s first e-Rulemaking project. She has also worked as a consultant with Apple on computational linguistics, with Oxford University Press on crowd lexicography, and with Socialtext on social interaction design. She actively contributes to g0v (“gov zero”), a vibrant community that focuses on creating tools for civil society with the call to “fork the government.”

Mélody Patry is Advocacy Director at Access Now where she leads on global advocacy, communications, and campaigns, and works closely with the Policy and Tech teams to develop the strategies and partnerships needed to protect the internet and those who use it. Mélody was previously head of advocacy at free speech organization Index on Censorship in London, where she worked with human rights defenders, government officials, and in coalitions such as the Global Network Initiative, the Civic Solidarity Platform, and Don’t Spy on Us. Before Index on Censorship, she worked with Cairo-based grassroots organisations and artists on campaigns addressing women’s rights issues, assisted the Representative to the European Union for Doctors Without Borders, and acted as a political advisor for the Delegation of the European Union to the United Nations. She holds an MA in International Security from Sciences Po Paris and a BA in Law and Political Science from Lille II University.

Matt Mitchell is a hacker and Tech Fellow at the Ford Foundation where he works with the BUILD and Technology and Society teams to develop digital security strategy, technical assistance offerings, and safety and security measures for the foundation’s grantee partners.

Matt was recently named by WIRED magazine as one of the WIRED25, a group of “innovators who are using technology to lead society through this period of global uncertainty and pointing the way to a safer future.” He was previously listed by VICE’s MOTHERBOARD as a HUMAN OF THE YEAR for his work protecting marginalised communities from surveillance.

Committed to using his vast digital skills — as hacker, developer, operational security trainer, security researcher, and data journalist — for good, Matt has worked in various capacities at the intersection of technology and social justice. He directed digital safety and privacy for Tactical Technology Collective (a global NGO based in Berlin), and has trained numerous activists, journalists, and NGOs in digital security, safety, and privacy. In line with his personal work (which focuses on marginalised, aggressively monitored, and over-policed populations), Matt founded and leads CryptoHarlem — impromptu workshops teaching basic cryptography tools to the predominantly African American community in Upper Manhattan. He has worked for private security firm GJS Security, helping to protect devices from hackers, and has also worked as a data journalist at the New York Times as well as a developer at CNN, Time Inc., NewsOne, and other media outlets.

In 2016, Matt served as a Ford-Mozilla Open Web fellow, embedded at Color Of Change. He has also been an Internet Freedom Festival fellow, a New America Cybersecurity Initiative fellow, and an adviser to a host of organisations including the Open Technology Fund, Internet Freedom Festival, Human Rights Foundation, Digital Security Exchange (DSX), UC Berkeley Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity, and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. 

María Paz Canales is the Executive Director of Derechos Digitales, a non-profit organisation she helped found in 2005. With her team based in Chile, she works to advance human rights, privacy, and access to knowledge and information in Latin America. Her prior work in private practice and academia covered telecommunications regulation, competition, data protection, and intellectual property. María is a Chilean lawyer and holds a Master’s Degree with specialisation in Law and Technology from the University of California, Berkeley.

Evelyn Austin is the Executive Director of Bits of Freedom where she is responsible for strategy, personnel, and operational management. She previously supported the organisation’s voluntary projects, contributed to strengthening the European network, and wrote about the dominance of major communication platforms. Evelyn is also the co-founder of The Hmm (a platform for contemporary visual culture), and a member of the Digital Culture advisory committee of the Creative Industries Fund NL.

Pia Mancini is the co-founder & CEO at Open Collective, as well as the Chair of DemocracyEarth Foundation. An ardent democracy activist and open source technology sustainer, Pia has worked in politics in Argentina and developed technology for democracy around the world. She is a Y Combinator Alum, Forum of Young Global Leaders (World Economic Forum) member, globetrotter, and Roma’s mum.

Sarah Aoun is the chief technologist at the Open Technology Fund. As a human rights technologist, she works with activists, journalists, and high-risk communities on security and privacy. She has given numerous trainings on operational and digital security and has worked with several groups and NGOs to set up organisational security practices. Sarah currently sits on the board of the Internet Freedom Festival. She was previously a Ford-Mozilla Open Web fellow, an Internet Freedom fellow, and an advisor to both GJS Security and the Human Rights Foundation.

Swee Leng Harris is a Principal at Luminate where she works with the Data & Digital Rights team to identify funding opportunities, support funding execution and portfolio management, and undertake policy research and analysis. She is also a member of the Privacy and Consumer Advisory Group for the UK Government.

Prior to joining Luminate, Swee Leng was Head of Policy and Public Affairs at The Legal Education Foundation where she led a portfolio of policy grants focused on the technical legal capacity of civil society to engage with the legislative process relating to the UK’s exit from the EU. She was also responsible for developing the Foundation’s activity on data processing by government, public law, and rule of law principles.

She previously worked at the Bingham Centre for the Rule of Law where she led the secretariat for the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Rule of Law. Swee Leng began her career as an environment and planning lawyer.

Amira El-Sayed is a Principal at Luminate where she sources and manages Luminate’s global Civic Empowerment grants and investments to help ensure that everyone – especially those who are marginalised or underserved – can participate in governance, receive the services they need, and hold those in power to account.

Amira was most recently Director of Programs and Strategy at Reboot, leading its New York-based Programs Team and working to advance civic participation and social action with a variety of philanthropic, government, and private sector partners. She also worked on Reboot’s theory of change and organisational strategy.

Prior to Reboot, Amira was a Programme Manager at Transparency International – Defence and Security. While there she led the Africa Programme and later managed an initiative to develop global norms for responsible defence governance, as well as the Government Defence Anti-Corruption Index (Transparency International’s flagship publication on defence and security).

A former Tahrir Square activist, Amira started her career with non-profit organisations in Egypt.

As Deputy Director, Meetali assists in setting and achieving Reset’s strategic direction. Her mission is two-fold — to ensure organizational effectiveness and to strengthen programmatic work in campaigning, litigation, and policy development and advocacy. She brings two decades of experience to Reset as a lawyer, academic and campaigner, both in the United States and in South Africa. Meetali began her legal career post 9/11 representing individuals charged with terrorism. She later focused on holding corporations accountable for human rights abuses, and facilitated the development of the African Coalition on Corporate Accountability. She’s lectured extensively in the theory and practice of international human rights law and advocacy. Most recently, she served as Legal and Campaign Director at Avaaz, where she worked to safeguard human rights and to protect democracies and vulnerable communities from hate speech and disinformation.

As Advocacy Director, Alaphia is in charge of developing our advocacy and campaigning strategy, including partner engagement. Her mission is to build a diverse and global network of civil society groups and stakeholders working to tackle digital threats to democracy. She brings a decade of campaigning experience to Reset, first at Amnesty International and then as a senior campaigner at Avaaz, where she focused on issues of media reform, human rights, and the impact of digital hate speech on minorities. One of Alaphia’s successes includes protecting Sky Television in the UK from a takeover by media mogul Rupert Murdoch. She previously worked as a news anchor and journalist at New Delhi Television, where she expanded the network’s coverage of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami to some of the most remote parts of South Asia.

As Executive Director, Ben is responsible for Reset’s strategic direction. In this capacity he oversees the coordination of our policy, technology, and civic engagement work, while providing expert counsel on policy development and advocacy. His mission is to create a global network of organisations working to achieve Reset’s aims by coordinating and integrating financial, knowledge, and relational resources across the globe. Ben’s role at Reset is an evolution of his previous position as Luminate’s Director of Policy & Advocacy (he continues to be policy and advocacy advisor at Luminate). Ben previously co-led the Stiftung Neue Verantwortung (SNV) in Berlin, helping develop the organisation into a leading tech policy voice in German politics. He was also a Senior Adviser to New America in Washington DC, helping design the Public Interest Technology Initiative. Ben led the technology policy advisory group for the 2016 Clinton US presidential campaign.

As UK Director, Poppy leads our UK policy and political strategy. Combining her expertise in policy and technology, Poppy’s mission is to maximise Reset’s impact in the UK and help drive its influential policy agenda. In addition to previously running multiple technology advisory businesses and supporting some of the world’s leading technology companies and start-ups, Poppy also worked in Downing Street for two years where she was an advisor on public appointments and tech policy. Poppy is a World Economic Forum “Global Shaper” and in 2018 was recognised in Brummell Magazine’s “Ones to Watch” list celebrating London’s high-potential talent.

As Operations Manager, Vivian is responsible for developing and implementing Reset’s internal operational strategy. Combining expertise in internal control and compliance management, Vivian oversees the processing of Reset’s investments and shores Reset’s financial and risk positions. Her mission is to utilize institutional learning and demand sensing to refine a velocity-focused funding operations model. Vivian studies civil society at SOAS and has been gaining experience in operations management since 2016.

As Senior Advisor, Felix leads our German policy and political strategy and advises on Reset the overall policy direction. Based in Berlin, Felix currently focuses on building civil society coalitions in the face of growing digital threats to democracy. Also, he helps policymakers develop systemic approaches to regulating Big Tech and reining into surveillance capitalism. Previously, Felix was with the European External Action Service, Europe’s diplomatic arm, where he helped shape the EU’s strategic response to disinformation and malign digital interference. He also spent a number of years with the European Commission after starting his career as a researcher and journalist.

As Policy Advisor, Dylan conducts research and strategic planning to support our programmatic work on law and policy around the world. He works to expand Reset’s network of relationships by evaluating projects and scoping funding opportunities in support of cutting-edge research, technology development, civic engagement, and policy advocacy. Dylan’s role at Reset builds on his previous work as a researcher for Luminate and Omidyar Network where his remit focused on developing understandings about digital threats to democracy and studying elections, disinformation, and data privacy legislation. In this capacity, he also worked on due diligence for grants and investments.

As Chief Technologist, Dan oversees our technology-centred efforts. He leads Reset’s technology funding and implementation work, provides strategic counsel, and connects a network of experts to support Reset and our partners across the full portfolio of our work. His mission is to build Reset’s capacity as a trusted source and sharer of knowledge at the intersection of technology and democracy. Dan previously served as Principal Director and Chief Technologist of the Open Technology Fund (OTF), which he co-founded in 2012 and remains involved with as a strategic advisor to the team …

As program and project manager, Yael works closely with the Chief Technologist to help with organization, task management, and timelines to keep the Reset team informed and efficient. She comes to Reset with a background in museums, informal education, public history, and grassroots organizing in New York City and Washington, DC. Her work in the public history and museum sector has focused on institutional critique, labor within the sector, and using material culture to craft narratives about difficult histories.

As Strategic Consultant, Brandi supports Reset’s strategic programs and research. Brandi Geurkink is a campaigner who wrestles with some of society’s thorniest problems — and then maps a pathway to systemic solutions. With a background in digital rights, civic rights and economic justice movements, Brandi has honed her skills in grassroots mobilization, investigative research, and coalition building. Her background is varied, but her approach to social change is singular: interrogating power imbalances in society and shifting power to those who are impacted most.

Currently, Brandi is a Senior Policy Fellow at Mozilla, the global nonprofit behind Firefox. At Mozilla, Brandi comes up with new ways to hold the internet’s biggest platforms accountable for algorithms, online advertising, privacy, and other issues. Brandi is the creator of YouTubeRegrets, the largest-ever crowdsourced investigation into YouTube’s recommendation engine and its impact on society. YouTube Regrets has been featured in hundreds of news stories, cited in the EU’s Digital Services Act, and won a coveted Shorty Impact Award.

Brandi’s research and commentary has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, NBC News, NPR (U.S.), BBC, the Times of India (India), Rappler (Philippines) and dozens of other publications. Brandi is based in Berlin, Germany.

As Resident Fellow, Fiona Krakenbürger supports and consults Reset in its programmatic work and research, while working on new funding approaches to Open Source Infrastructure. Fiona co-authored a feasibility study in 2021 for the German government that serves as a basis for the design of a new federal funding program, the Sovereign Tech Fund. During her fellowship, Fiona will focus on the validation and implementation of a suitable funding model that effectively supports Open Source Infrastructure, further refining the results of the study and setting the guardrails for the new Funding Program.

Her experience builds on her previous roles as a senior manager and technologist in various funding programs at the intersection of technology, human rights, privacy and civic tech, among them the US based Open Technology Fund and the German Prototype Fund.

As Resident Fellow, Rebecca Weiss supports and consults Reset in its programmatic work and research. Rebecca is an award-winning computational social scientist and data science leader. She has worked in academia and industry, applying innovative methods to large-scale data sets to better understand online environments and their behavioral consequences.

As Head of Research and Innovation at Mozilla, she created and incubated the Rally project, a privacy-preserving data platform leveraged by institutions including Princeton, Stanford, and The Markup to conduct research in the public interest. Before that, she founded the Firefox Data Science team and advanced Lean Data Practices as Mozilla’s Director of Data Science.

Weiss has held fellowships at the Berkman-Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University and at the Brown Institute for Media Innovation (a joint effort between Stanford School of Engineering and Columbia School of Journalism). She has advised the U.S. Congress on artificial intelligence policy and her research has been published in leading computer science and social science conferences and journals, such as WWW, ICWSM, KDD, PET, and ICA. She holds a PhD from Stanford, a SM in Technology Policy from MIT, and a BA in Cognitive Systems from the University of British Columbia.

As Resident Fellow, Louis Barclay supports and consults Reset in its programmatic work and technology strategy. Louis is a technologist with a background in creating open source tools to help people control their usage of the internet, including Nudge.

In 2021, Louis was banned for life by Facebook for his tool Unfollow Everything, which helped people use Facebook less. The ban received coverage in the Wall Street Journal, New York Post, Business Insider and dozens of other publications, and led to support from figures including Frances Haugen and Jimmy Wales.

Louis’s current focus is on creating infrastructure to establish evidence of effective interventions against online harms. During his fellowship, he will be helping Reset’s partners to translate concepts into the appropriate product and technology framework.

Louis has built multiple commercial software products and was previously a co-founder of Stacker.