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Katrin Verclas
Katrin Verclas is a recognized expert in new media communications for social impact.
She is the co-founder & editor of MobileActive.org, a global network of practitioners using mobile phones for social impact. She is also a principal at Calder Strategies, focusing on mobile strategy, impact evaluation, effectiveness & ROI assessment, & interactive capacity building. Katrin has written widely on communication strategies & new media in citizen participation & civil society organizations, & for development.
Katrin's background is in IT management, IT in social change organizations, & in philanthropy. She has led several nonprofit organizations, including as the Executive Director of NTEN: The Nonprofit Technology Network, the national association of IT professionals working in the more than one million nonprofit organizations in the United States. Previously she served as a program officer at the Proteus Fund, focusing on the use of technology in civic & democratic participation, & in government transparency.
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Emeka Okafor
Emeka Okafor has a diverse, interdisciplinary background focused on developing & raising the awareness of all things African. Currently, he is a Partner in Caranda Fine Foods, a manufacturer of globally distributed gourmet beverages locally sourced & produced from across Sub-Saharan Africa. Mr. Okafor is also a principal at the Makeda Fund, a private equity fund focused on the development of women-owned & managed Small & Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in Africa. In 2007, alongside his other projects, Emeka organized & ran the TED-Africa Conference; he continues on today as the TED-Africa Director. In addition to his work on Caranda, Makeda, & TED, Mr. Okafor is the Research Director for DeniAfrica (Direct Expatriate Nationals Investment), a poverty reduction & external resource mobilization program for countries that have received massive debt cancellation from the HIPC Program. Emeka sits on the advisory boards of Market For Change (now called SamaSource) an outsourcing startup, & Students for the Advancement of Global (SAGE) , an organization that seeks to advance entrepreneurship & community service among the world's youth. In addition Emeka currently serves as a senior advisor to the X-prize foundation for their Global Development prize.
Emeka is also an active writer & blogger. Passionately committed to sharing the issues & ideas that are guiding Africa's future, he is the founder & author of two publicly acclaimed blogs Timbuktu Chronicles & Africa Unchained. The former covers the confluence of entrepreneurship, science & technology in Africa & amongst Africans, while the latter explores issues of governance, policy, education, & institution building in Africa. He has also contributed articles to the book: Worldchanging: A Users Guide for the 21st Century.
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Deborah Estrin
Deborah Estrin is a Professor of Computer Science & Electrical Engineering at UCLA, holds the Jon Postel Chair in Computer Networks, & is Founding Director of the National Science Foundation funded Center for Embedded Networked Sensing (CENS). CENS' mission is to explore & develop innovative, end-to-end, distributed sensing systems, across an array of applications, from ecosystems to human systems. Since the late 90's Estrin's work has focused on multi-disciplinary, experimental-systems research as applied to a variety of environmental monitoring challenges. Most recently this work includes participatory-sensing systems, at the personal & community level, leveraging the location, acoustic, image, & attached-sensor data streams increasingly available globally from mobile phones. Previously, Estrin's research addressed Internet protocol design & scaling, in particular, inter-domain & multicast routing. She received her PhD in 1985 from MIT & her BS in 1980 from UC Berkeley, both in EECS.
Estrin currently serves on the National Research Council's Computer Science & Telecommunications Board (CSTB) & TTI/Vanguard Advisory Board, & was previously a member of the NSF National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) Advisory board, the NSF CISE Advisory Committee, & DARPA-ISAT. Estrin was selected as the first ACM-W Athena Lecturer in 2006, was awarded the Anita Borg Institute's Women of Vision Award for Innovation in 2007, & was inducted as a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2007. She is a fellow of the IEEE, ACM, & AAAS.
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Ethan Zuckerman
Ethan Zuckerman is a research fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School. His research in the field of information & communication technology for development includes work on telecommunications policy, free & open source software, & citizen media. With Rebecca MacKinnon, he is the cofounder of Global Voices, an award-winning international community of webloggers & citizen journalists. Prior to his work with Berkman & Global Voices, Ethan founded Geekcorps, a volunteer organization which sent technology experts to work with ICT companies in the developing world. He is the former CTO of Tripod.com, a pioneering web hosting company based in Western Massachusetts, where he lives & works. He serves as advisor to several nonprofit projects that focus on technology & social change, & serves on the board of Open Society Institute's US Program. His personal blog, "My Heart's in Accra".
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Patrick Meier
Patrick Philippe Meier is an international consultant & PhD candidate. As a consultant, he has worked with multiple international, regional, national & nongovernmental organizations to improve or implement a number of important conflict early warning & crisis mapping projects in Africa, Asia & Europe. In Africa, Patrick played an instrumental role in operationalizing the Horn’s regional conflict early warning & response network. He also worked closely with ECOWAS & WANEP to launch the first phase of West Africa’s regional early warning system. As a doctoral research fellow with the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative (HHI), Patrick presently co-leads a major research project on conflict early warning & crisis mapping with an overall focus on innovative applications of ICTs. As a PhD candidate at The Fletcher School, Patrick’s dissertation research focuses on the tactical use of ICTs by social movements operating in repressive states. He is the director for applied research at DigiActive & is currently working with the Berkman Center on two related research projects. Patrick graduated with an MA in International Affairs from Columbia University’s School of International & Public Affairs (SIPA). He was born in Abidjan & raised in Kenya, where his parents have since retired. Patrick blogs at iRevolution.
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