Brad Smith

President and Chief Legal Officer, Microsoft

In this role Smith is responsible for the company’s corporate, external, and legal affairs. He leads a team of more than 1,300 business, legal and corporate affairs professionals working in 55 countries. These teams are responsible for the company’s legal work, its intellectual property portfolio, patent licensing business, corporate philanthropy, government affairs, public policy, corporate governance, and social responsibility work. He is also Microsoft’s chief compliance officer. Smith plays a key role in representing the company externally and in leading the company’s work on a number of critical issues including privacy, security, accessibility, environmental sustainability and digital inclusion, among others.

Smith joined Microsoft in 1993, and before becoming general counsel in 2002 he spent three years leading the Legal and Corporate Affairs (LCA) team in Europe, then five years serving as the deputy general counsel responsible for LCA’s teams outside the United States.

Maryam Al-Khawaja

Bahraini human rights activist

Maryam Al-Khawaja is a Bahraini human rights activist and the co-director of the Gulf Center for Human Rights (GCHR).

Alexander De Croo

Deputy Prime Minister of Belgium

Alexander De Croo is Deputy Prime Minister for Open VLD and Minister of Development Cooperation, Digital Agenda, Telecom and Postal Services in the Michel I Government. As Minister of Development Cooperation, he focuses on strengthening human rights and promoting local economic growth in the partner countries.

Before his political career, Alexander De Croo became a project leader of The Boston Consulting Group in 1999. Starting from 2006, he founded a new company called Darts-ip specialized in providing service to Intellectual Property professionals

Mitchell Baker

Executive Chairwoman, Mozilla

As the leader of the Mozilla Project, Mitchell Baker is responsible for organizing and motivating a massive, worldwide collective of employees and volunteers who are breathing new life into the Internet with the Mozilla Firefox Web browser and other Mozilla products. Mitchell was born and raised in Berkeley, California, receiving her BA in Asian Studies from UC Berkeley and her JD from the Boalt Hall School of Law.

Mitchell has been the general manager of the Mozilla project since 1999. She served as CEO of Mozilla until January 2008, when the organization's rapid growth encouraged her to split her responsibilities and add a CEO. Mitchell remains deeply engaged in developing product offerings that promote the mission of empowering individuals. She also guides the overall scope and direction of Mozilla's mission. As Chair of Mozilla, Mitchell continues her commitment to an open, innovative Web and the infinite possibilities it presents. TIME Magazine profiled Mitchell under “Scientists and Thinkers” in its 2005 TIME 100.

Nighat Dad

Executive Director, Digital Rights Foundation

Nighat Dad is the Executive Director of Digital Rights Foundation, Pakistan. She is an accomplished lawyer and a human rights activist.Nighat Dad is one of the pioneers who have been campaigning around access to open internet in Pakistan and globally. She has been actively campaigning and engaging at a policy level on issues focusing on Internet Freedom, Women and technology, Digital Security and Women’s empowerment. Ms.Dad has been recently included in Next Generation Leaders List by TIME's magazine for her work on helping women fight online harassment.

Salil Shetty

Secretary General at Amnesty International

Salil Shetty joined Amnesty International as the organization’s eighth Secretary General in July 2010.

A long-term activist on poverty and justice, Salil Shetty leads the movement's worldwide work to end human rights violations. Prior to joining Amnesty International, Salil Shetty was Director of the United Nations Millennium Campaign from 2003 to 2010. He played a pivotal role in building the global advocacy campaign for the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals.

From 1998 to 2003, he was chief executive of ActionAid, and is credited with transforming the organization into one of the world’s foremost international development NGOs.

Salil Shetty studied at the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad and at the London School of Economics.

Nanjira Sambuli

Digital Equality Advocacy Manager, World Wide Web Foundation

Nanjira leads the Web Foundation’s advocacy efforts to promote digital equality in access to and use of the Web. A Nairobi-based researcher and analyst, Nanjira brings broad expertise as an advocate and consultant working at the intersection of governance, media, culture and society.

Immediately prior to joining the Web Foundation, Nanjira was Research Lead at the iHub in Nairobi, where she helped shape governance and tech research, and provided strategic guidance for the growth of technology research in East Africa. Her recent research includes work on the ICT and Governance Landscape in East Africa (iHub Research), Cybersecurity and Cyber-resilience in East Africa (CIGI), research into the challenges of promoting Internet access in developing countries while upholding net neutrality principles (Journal of Cyber Policy), and Technology Innovation Hubs and Policy Engagement (Making All Voices Count). Nanjira is also a columnist for the Daily Nation newspaper in Kenya, a member of DFID’s Digital Advisory Panel and served as a deputy on the United Nations High Level Panel for Women’s Economic Empowerment (2016-17).

Edward Snowden

Board Member at the Freedom of the Press Foundation

Edward Snowden is a former intelligence officer who served the CIA, NSA, and DIA for nearly a decade as a subject matter expert on technology and cybersecurity. In 2013, he revealed the NSA was unconstitutionally seizing the private records of billions of individuals who had not been suspected of any wrongdoing, resulting in the largest debate about reforms to US surveillance policy since 1978. He has received awards for courage, integrity, and public service, and was named the top global thinker of 2013 by Foreign Policy magazine. Today, he works on methods of enforcing human rights through the application and development of new technologies. He joined the board of Freedom of the Press Foundation in February 2014.

Cindy Cohn

Executive Director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation

Cindy Cohn is the Executive Director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. From 2000-2015 she served as EFF’s Legal Director as well as its General Counsel. Ms. Cohn first became involved with EFF in 1993, when EFF asked her to serve as the outside lead attorney in Bernstein v. Dept. of Justice, the successful First Amendment challenge to the U.S. export restrictions on cryptography.

The National Law Journal named Ms. Cohn one of 100 most influential lawyers in America in 2013, noting: "[I]f Big Brother is watching, he better look out for Cindy Cohn." She was also named in 2006 for "rushing to the barricades wherever freedom and civil liberties are at stake online." In 2007 the National Law Journal named her one of the 50 most influential women lawyers in America. In 2010 the Intellectual Property Section of the State Bar of California awarded her its Intellectual Property Vanguard Award and in 2012 the Northern California Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists awarded her the James Madison Freedom of Information Award.

Colin Crowell

Vice President of Global Public Policy, Twitter

Colin Crowell serves as Vice President of Global Public Policy at Twitter, Inc. He is a recognized leader in Washington’s high tech policy circles. Prior to joining Twitter, he served for over 20 years as a telecommunications and Internet staffer to U.S. Representative Edward J. Markey (D-MA). Subsequent to working on Capitol Hill, he was Senior Counselor to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski, assisting in the development of the National Broadband Plan, and serving as the Chairman’s strategic advisor on a wide range of policy matters including wireless policy, Internet freedom, user privacy, broadband deployment and competition, among others.

Göran Marby

CEO and President of ICANN

Göran Marby brings over 20 years experience as a senior executive in the Internet and technology sector, as well as his leadership as Director General at the independent regulatory body Swedish Post and Telecom Authority (PTS), where he worked closely with international organizations and standards bodies.

Prior to this, he served as CEO and founder of Appgate, a Swedish security software company (now Cryptzone in the U.S), where he grew the organization to a global company with customers in 35 countries and operations in the U.S.

Before his seven years at Appgate, he was CEO for the advanced networks company Cygate Group (now owned by TeliaSonera) where he spearheaded operations in five countries with revenues in the range of 120 million euros. And as Country Manager for Cisco in Sweden, Marby led sales of all products and services.

He currently serves on several Boards including: The Swedish Broadband Forum, The Swedish E-identification Board and the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC).

Marby, age 53, holds a Bachelor of Science in Finance from the University of Gothenburg, School of Business, Economics and Law, and is married with three kids. He is fluent in English and Swedish and is a Swedish national.

Frank William La Rue

ADG for Communication and Information, UNESCO

Frank La Rue is a Guatemalan labor and human rights law expert and served as UN Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of the Right to Freedom of Opinion and Expression, from August 2008 to August 2014. Along with American Human Rights attorneys, Anna Gallagher and Wallie Mason, Mr. La Rue is the founder of the Center for Legal Action for Human Rights (CALDH) and has been involved in the promotion of human rights for over 25 years. He was nominated for (but did not win) the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize by Mairead Corrigan, Northern Irish peace activist and 1976 laureate. Currently, Mr La Rue is the Executive Director of Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Europe.

As the UN Special Rapporteur Mr La Rue promoted and protected the right to freedom of opinion and expression from 2008 to 2014. During his tenure he wrote and presented 10 landmark reports on the state of freedom of expression to the UN Human Rights Council and UN General Assembly. The reports presented important findings on topics such as the protection of journalists, freedom of expression exercised through the internet, and the impact of state surveillance on privacy and freedom of expression.

Ron Deibert

Director of the Citizen Lab, author, and founder of Psiphon

Ron Deibert (PhD, University of British Columbia) is Professor of Political Science, and Director of the Canada Centre for Global Security Studies and the Citizen Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto. The Citizen Lab is an interdisciplinary research and development hothouse working at the intersection of the Internet, global security, and human rights. He is a co-founder and a principal investigator of the OpenNet Initiative and Information Warfare Monitor (2003-2012) projects.

Deibert was one of the founders and (former) VP of global policy and outreach for Psiphon Inc. Deibert has published numerous articles, chapters, and books on issues related technology, media, and world politics. He was one of the authors of the Tracking Ghostnet report that documented an alleged cyber-espionage network affecting over 1200 computers in 103 countries, and the Shadows in the Cloud report, which analyzed a cloud-based espionage network. He is a co-editor of three major volumes with MIT Press: Access Denied: The practice and policy of Internet Filtering (2008), Access Controlled: The shaping of power, rights, and rule in cyberspace (2010), and Access Contested: Security, Identity, and Resistance in Asian Cyberspace (2011). He is the author of Parchment, Printing, and Hypermedia: Communications in World Order Transformation (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), and the forthcoming book Black Code: the battle for the future of cyberspace (forthcoming: McClelland & Stewart, 2013). He has been a consultant and advisor to governments, international organizations, and civil society/NGOs on issues relating to cyber security, cyber crime, online free expression, and access to information. He presently serves on the editorial board of the journals International Political Sociology, Security Dialogue, Explorations in Media Ecology, Review of Policy Research, and Astropolitics.

Deibert is on the advisory board of Access Now, Privacy International, and is a member of the board of directors of Lake Ontario Waterkeeper.

Deibert was awarded the University of Toronto Outstanding Teaching Award (2002), the Northrop Frye Distinguished Teaching and Research Award (2002), and the Carolyn Tuohy Award for Public Policy (2010). He was a Ford Foundation research scholar of Information and communication technologies (2002-2004).

Carolina Rossini

Global Connectivity Policy Manager, Facebook

Carolina Rossini is an experienced international professional with over 16 years of work in the internet and telco sector. She is a World Economic Forum Young Global Lead with a demonstrated history of working in for-profits and non-profit organizations. She is skilled in Internet and Telecommunications Law, Regulation and Policy; Human Rights Law and Advocacy; and Intellectual Property transactions, including open licensing. Carolina graduated in International Relations (Masters), Law (LL.M and JD), and Management (MBA).

Alex Walden

Counsel, Free Expression and Human Rights, Google

Alex Walden works on free expression and human rights at Google. Her work includes representing Google in the Global Network Initiative (GNI) and participating as a member of the Freedom Online Coalition's working group on transparency. Alex joined Google from The Raben Group, where she was a director focused on civil rights, women's rights, criminal justice reform issues, and nominations.

Prior to joining TRG, Alex worked at the Center for American Progress. She has also served as a law clerk for the U.S. House of Representatives in the Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights & Liberties and the U.S. Senate, Committee on the Judiciary. Alex also worked with the U.S. EEOC, U.S. Department of Labor, and Bay Area Legal Aid during law school. Before attending law school, Alex spent almost four years working in the D.C. Office of Legal Momentum (formerly NOW Legal Defense & Education Fund). Alex holds a B.A. in political science from American University and a J.D. from University of San Francisco School of Law.

Gbenga Sesan

Executive Director, Paradigm Initiative

Gbenga Sesan is the Executive Director of Paradigm Initiative. Originally trained as an Electronic & Electrical Engineer at Obafemi Awolowo University, Gbenga completed Executive Education programs at Lagos Business School, New York Group for Technology Transfer, Oxford University, Harvard University, Stanford University, Santa Clara University and University of the Pacific. His consulting experience includes assignments completed for numerous institutions, including Microsoft, Harvard University and United Nations agencies, among others, in over 30 countries.

A Schwab Foundation Social Entrepreneur of the Year (2014) and former member of the United Nations Committee of eLeaders on Youth and ICT, he is a CyberStewards Fellow, Crans Montana Forum Fellow, Archbishop Desmond Tutu Leadership Fellow, Ashoka Fellow, Our Common Future Fellow and Cordes Fellow. Gbenga served as a member of the Presidential committees on Harmonization of Information Technology, Telecommunications and Broadcasting Sectors (2006) and Roadmap for the Achievement of Accelerated Universal Broadband Infrastructure and Services Provision (2013), and was listed by CNN as one of the Top 10 African Tech Voices on Twitter and by Ventures Africa as one of 40 African Legends Under 40.

Rebecca MacKinnon

Director of Ranking Digital Rights

Rebecca MacKinnon is director of the Ranking Digital Rights project at the New America Foundation, developing a system to rank the world's most powerful Internet, telecommunications, and other ICT sector companies on free expression and privacy criteria.

Author of Consent of the Networked: The Worldwide Struggle For Internet Freedom (Basic Books, 2012) MacKinnon is co-founder of the citizen media network Global Voices Online, whose Board of Directors she presently chairs. She also serves on the board of the Committee to Protect Journalists and was a founding board member of the Global Network Initiative. She is also a visiting affiliate at the Annenberg School for Communication’s Center for Global Communications Studies. Before launching Ranking Digital Rights, she was a senior research fellow (2012-2013) and Bernard L. Schwartz senior fellow (2010-2012) at the New America Foundation.

Fluent in Mandarin Chinese, MacKinnon was CNN’s Beijing Bureau Chief from 1998-2001 and Tokyo Bureau Chief from 2001-2003. Since leaving CNN in 2004 she has held fellowships at Harvard’s Shorenstein Center on the Press and Public Policy, the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, the Open Society Foundations, and Princeton’s Center for Information Technology Policy. For two years in 2007-08 she served on the faculty of the University of Hong Kong’s Journalism and Media Studies Centre, and taught as an adjunct lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania Law School in Fall 2013. She received her AB magna cum laude from Harvard University and was a Fulbright scholar in Taiwan.

Japleen Prasicha

Founder & Editor-In-Chief of Feminism In India

Japleen Prasicha is the Founder & Editor-In-Chief of Feminism In India.com, a social movement to learn, educate and develop a feminist consciousness among the youth. It aims to serve as India’s first feminist portal for resource & documentation purposes for everything related to feminism in India and a new media community platform for people to break their silence and raise their voices. The platform deals with themes like feminism, women, gender, sexuality, intersectionality and brings forth the minority, marginalized and powerless voices.

Carolina Botera

CEO, Fundación Karisma

Carolina Botera is the CEO of Fundación Karisma, an activist, consultant and lawyer with master’s degrees from universities in Belgium and Spain. She is an author and lecturer on free access, free culture and authors’ rights.

Julie Owono

Head of Africa Desk, Internet Sans Frontières

Julie Owono is a lawyer and the founder of start-up Feowl, a platform that produces data on energy in African cities. She is the head of the Africa Desk at Internet Sans Frontières (Internet Without Borders), where she focuses on Rights and Freedoms in the digital space, and develops the organization globally. She regularly writes columns for various publications, including Al Jazeera English and Quartz, on issues related to politics, law and innovation in the Gulf of Guinea. She often appears as a Gulf of Guinea expert on International TV channels (France 24 English, BBC World, Russia Today, Huff Post Live, etc).

Ronaldo Lemos

Director of the Institute for Technology and Society of Rio

Ronaldo Lemos is an internationally respected Brazilian scholar and commentator on intellectual property, culture, and technology. He founded the Center for Technology & Society at the Fundação Getulio Vargas (FGV) Law School, where he is also head professor of intellectual property law. He is also Project Lead of Creative Commons Brazil and an affiliate and Brazil´s liaison to the director at the MIT Media Lab. He holds law degrees from University of Sao Paulo Law School and Harvard Law and has published a number books and journal articles. He was a Visiting Fellow at Princeton University in 2011 and 2013. Lemos is a founder of Overmundo, for which he received the Prix Ars Electronica Golden Nica in the category of digital communities. Lemos was one of the creators of the Marco Civil a draft legislation for regulating the Internet in Brazil protecting civil rights, privacy and net neutrality.

He is a member of the Council for Social Communication, a governmental body created by article 224 of the Brazilian Constitution to deal with matters related to communication, media and freedom of expression. Lemos writes weekly to Folha de S.Paulo, the largest national newspaper in Brazil, and contributes to a number of other publications, including Foreign Affairs, Harper's Bazaar, and Bravo!

Pastora Valero

Vice President, Government Affairs, Cisco

Pastora Valero is Vice President, Public Policy and Government Affairs, for Europe, Middle East, Africa and Russia (EMEAR) for Cisco Systems Inc., where she leads government affairs’ activities in the region and is responsible for developing and advancing Cisco’s technology and communications policy agenda with respect to broadband, internet governance, IP enabled services, trade, energy and technology policy issues.

Pastora joined Cisco in 2003, and prior to her regional role, she led Cisco’s European Union government affairs strategy between 2003 and 2013. She has almost two decades of experience in regulatory and public policy issues in the telecommunications and internet related areas, as well as on EU public policy with respect to competition, trade and information technology regulation. Prior to Cisco, Pastora was Vice-President Regulatory Affairs for Global TeleSystems (GTS), a pan-European fibre optic network operator. She started her career with the Brussels law firm Van Bael & Bellis, and dealt in particular with EU trade and competition law issues.

David Kaye

UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of expression

Prof. Kaye’s scholarship and teaching focus on public international law, especially international human rights law, international humanitarian law, accountability for violations of human rights, and the law governing the use of force. He is just as interested in efforts to translate international law—especially human rights law—in a domestic American context, whether in courts, legislatures, or the executive branches of government, at federal and state levels.Prof. Kaye has been appointed by the UN Human Rights Council to serve as Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, effective August 1, 2014, for three years.

With the assistance of students in his International Justice Clinic, Prof. Kaye will report to the UN on some of the key issues in free expression worldwide, such as the safety of journalists, severe restrictions placed on Internet access and usage, the chilling effects of electronic surveillance, hate speech and incitement to violence. Prof. Kaye began his legal career with the U.S. State Department, handling such subjects as international claims, nuclear nonproliferation, international humanitarian law, and accountability for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. Prior to joining UC Irvine, he co-founded UCLA’s International Human Rights Program and founded its International Justice Clinic, working on projects dealing with accountability for international crimes around the world.

In addition to his scholarship and teaching, Professor Kaye is an active member of the American Society of International Law, for which he served on its Executive Council and Executive Committee, and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He has also published essays and opinion pieces in mainstream publications such as Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, The New York Times, and The Los Angeles Times.

As a clinical teacher, Professor Kaye aims to help students discover and put to use tools to advocate for implementation of human rights law and accountability for serious violations and to assist those worldwide who are looking to build the rule of law in their own countries. He also believes in scholarship that helps advance our understanding of how international law operates—and in translating that scholarship, as much as possible, to the broader public and policymaking communities.

Walid Al-Saqaf

Board Trustee for the Internet Society (ISOC)

Walid Al-Saqaf is Yemeni, a software developer, an Internet rights advocate, and a postdoctoral researcher at Stockholm University with a passion for promoting a strong and open Internet that netizens can use to promote democratization and free speech.

As a computer engineering undergraduate student in the mid 1990s at the Middle East Technical University in Turkey, Walid designed YemenTimes.com as the first news website in his home country Yemen. In 2007, he launched YemenPortal.net as the first news aggregator and search engine of its kind in the Arab world to provide Internet users with the ability to get a wide spectrum of perspectives from various news sources on Yemen in Arabic and English. When the website was blocked by the Yemeni government in 2008 due to its open platform that allowed dissident voices to be heard, he developed Alkasir website censorship mapping circumvention solution, which was initially used to access YemenPortal.net, but which soon became widely used by Internet users in many states such as Iran, Syria, China and Saudi Arabia to bypass website filtering in those countries.

Featured by CNN, the Guardian, the Huffington Post and other media, Walid's work was particularly useful during the Arab Spring when some authoritarian Arab regimes practiced pervasive Internet filtering of news and social media websites. He has also been active in supporting open Internet access and online free speech in developing countries through non-technical means such as advocacy campaigns and training. His efforts have earned him recognition through several awards including a TED 2012 senior fellowship and Örebro University's 2010 Democracy Award.

Walid is also engaged in several initiatives to promote innovation and creativity in technology among the youth as he organized TEDxSanaa 2012 and 2013, founded Sanaa Hub as part of the Global Shapers Community of the World Economic Forum and co-founded and led Yemen's Internet Society Chapter for which he built a robust core team that was able to make ISOC-Yemen one of the most active chapters in the Middle East. Walid's unique position as a scholar based in Sweden as well as a pro-free speech cyber activist and software developer of Arab background have jointly helped him develop a wide a range of skills and expertise to contribute to technical and policy discussions around Internet-related issues on several platforms such as ICANN, RIPE, IGF, and the World Wide Web Foundation. This helped him build bridges between developing and developed countries when it comes to addressing key issues that concern Internet users around the world.