Tara L. Conley |
Bio Tara L. Conley is an interdisciplinary Black feminist scholar, media-maker, writer, and assistant professor in the School of Communication and Media at Montclair State University. She is the founder of MEDIA MAKE CHANGE, a consulting company that specializes in social justice storytelling through media production, strategic communications, curriculum development, and research. Her scholarship centers Black life in the study and exploration of place, media histories, and technoculture. Most recently, her reporting and creative nonfiction essays have appeared in Bloomberg, ZORA Magazine, Parents Magazine, Courier Newsroom, and in the anthology Black in the Middle: An Anthology of the Black Midwest. Learn more about Dr. Conley’s scholarship and multimedia projects by visiting www.taralconley.org and www.mediamakechange.org. What is your research focus? Key areas of scholarly and creative inquiry, and multimedia production include: cultural histories of media and technology (discourse, perceptions, and infrastructures); archiving digital cultures; critical transmedia storytelling; and the everyday lives of Black people in the study and exploration of place, media histories, and technoculture. |
Jazmia Henry |
Jazmia Henry seeks to reduce racial and gender bias in sentiment and textual analysis systems through the creation of an African American Vernacular English corpus. She received a Bachelor's Degree from Tulane University in 2016 and a Masters Degree at Columbia University in 2018. She has a background in statistical analysis, Natural Language Processing, Machine Learning, Econometrics, and Politics. She currently works as a Machine Learning Specialist at Motley Fool and has formerly worked for Morgan Stanley and the Hillary Clinton campaign.
What is your research focus? Natural Language Processing: Reducing Bias in Sentiment Analysis Systems. |
Venita Griffin possesses 15+ years of experience leading successful advocacy, digital, and multicultural campaigns. She currently serves as the digital director for a national nonprofit that trains and supports Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) community organizers, elected officials, and advocates.
In addition to the duties of her full-time role, Venita worked to organize millions of women of color voters during the 2020 election cycle, mobilized millions of low-income workers to call for passage of the HEROES Act, worked to organize displaced restaurant workers in Pennsylvania, California, and Michigan to secure benefits from their employers, provided digital support in an attempt to defeat the passage of Amendment One in her home state of Louisiana, and served as the lead digital consultant on a national COVID relief project which, among other victories, worked to win a mask mandate in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. She is the founding social media manager of the newly launched Blue Tent, a media outlet that reports on the progressive movement, and is the founder of a professional network for Black and Brown digital organizers. What is your research focus? Identifying and countering racial and economic bias in digital civic engagement tools and tactics. |
Sabrina Hersi Issa is a human rights technologist and angel investor committed to leveraging innovation as a tool to unlock opportunity and dignity for all. She does this through her work in technology, media and investments.
Sabrina leads Be Bold Media, a global strategy and innovation agency that works with companies and organizations on strategic transformation initiatives, scaling teams, global growth, policy innovation and movement-building. The agency also produces the Movement Security Summit, a digital security summit for movement technologists. She organizes Rights x Tech, a forum for technologists and activists to explicitly explore the intersections of technology and power. She leads The People’s Iftar, a campaign to gather community and raise funds for grassroots organizations serving Muslim communities. She created the Bold Prize. Sabrina is the founder of Survivor Fund, a political fund focused on championing the rights of survivors of sexual violence and building political power for survivors. She’s a contributor to the anthology Believe Me: How Trusting Women Can Change the World. What is your research focus? Policy recommendations to address the intersectional impacts of COVID on communities of color. |
Shakeer Rahman is a lawyer and community organizer with the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition. He was previously an Impact Litigation Attorney at The Bronx Defenders, where he worked on systemic lawsuits against police and courts, as well as a law clerk to Judge Beverly Martin on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit and Justice Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar on the California Supreme Court. Shakeer has written about policing and prisons in the Harvard Law Review, the New York Times, Al Jazeera America, Dissent Magazine, the London Review of Books, and Counterpunch. What is your research focus? Prison abolition, surveillance, decolonization, counter-insurgency. |
David Opuko |
David Selassie Opoku is a farmer and technologist from Ghana working at the intersection of food systems, technology, and education. He is currently the co-founder and Director of Technology at Growing Gold Farms, a food systems venture based in Tema, Ghana.
His work has focused on making data and technological skills accessible to journalists, advocacy organizations, entrepreneurs, academic institutions, and governments in resource-constrained contexts in over 30 countries across 5 continents. He has worked in data and technology roles with UNICEF’s Vaccine Delivery Programme, Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology, Open Knowledge Foundation and Open Contracting Partnership. He was a 2015 School of Data Fellow and a member of the United World College Council from 2016 to 2020. He is a graduate of the United World College Costa Rica, Swarthmore College, and the New Jersey Institute of Technology. |
Neema Iyer |
Neema Iyer is an artist and a technologist. She is the founder and director of Pollicy, a civic technology organization based in Kampala, Uganda. Pollicy uses data, design and technology to improve how citizens and government engage around public service delivery. She has a Masters in Public Health from Emory University and has worked on large-scale mobile and digital projects across Africa as part of TTC Mobile (previously Text to Change) and Viamo (previously VOTO Mobile). She currently leads the design of a number of projects focused on building data skills, on fostering conversations on data privacy and digital security, and on innovating around policy. Social media handles: @pollicyorg @neemaiyer.
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Burcu Kilic |
Burcu Kilic is a scholar, lawyer and digital rights advocate. She directs the Digital Rights Program at Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy organization based in Washington D.C. that champions public interest in the halls of power. She has researched and written extensively on intellectual property, innovation, digital rights and trade, and provided technical advice and assistance in numerous countries in Asia, Latin America, Europe and Africa.
Burcu also directs Public Citizen’s research on Access to Medicines. She was named as one of the 300 Women Leaders in Global Health in 2015 and currently works on global access to Covid-19 medical technologies. Burcu roots her technical and legal expertise in a profound desire to advance rights-based policymaking across the globe by promoting alliance-based civil society engagement, policy entrepreneurship and policy innovation. She serves as the U.S. co-chair of the Digital Policy Committee, Trans-Atlantic Consumer Dialogue and the Council Member of the Progressive International. She completed her Ph.D. at Queen Mary, University of London, holds L.L.M. degrees in Intellectual Property Law from Queen Mary, University of London and Information Technology Law from Stockholm University. She obtained her law degree from Ankara University, Turkey and was a SARChI research associate at the Institute for Economic Research on Innovation, Tshwane University of Technology, South Africa. |