Learn about John Perry Barlow, a co-founder of EFF and a member of the Board of Directors from 1990 until his death in 2018.
Erica is the Head of Technology at Parkwood Entertainment and advocate for diversity, equity, and inclusion in tech, as well as expanding access to tech exposure and education. Erica's career began over 20 years ago as a System Administrator at the University of Alaska, before she began working at Google in 2006. After nearly a decade at Google, Erica joined Slack in 2015, building their Native Client Build and Release infrastructure. Her scope quickly grew as a Senior Engineering Manager at Patreon, followed by roles as Principal Group Engineering Manager at Microsoft, and Director of Engineering at Github, finally landing as Chief Technology Officer at the DCCC (Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee).
Erica has been on the advisory Boards for Atipica and Hack the Hood, the Code.org Diversity Council, the Barbie Global Advisory Board, and has been a Tech Mentor for Black Girls Code. Erica is a founding member of Project Include, was the 2015 Level Playing Field Institute Lux Award winner, a nominee for the 2016 TechCrunch Crunchies Include Diversity Award, and was included in WIRED Magazine's 2016 Next List and Essence Magazine's 2017 Woke 100. Erica is currently based in Oakland, California.
Brian Behlendorf has been a fan of the EFF since the early 90's, when he first discovered the Internet as an undergrad at UC Berkeley, and saw both how essential and how fragile digital civil liberties were about to become. He carried that sense of purpose with him as he set up Wired Magazine's first web site in 1993, and then engineered the launch of Hotwired in 1994. In the same spirit of open standards and open source code that built the Net, Brian and 8 other individuals co-founded the Apache Group (and later the Apache Software Foundation), the team that built and gave away the popular Apache HTTP (Web) Server. Simultaneously he launched CollabNet, which brought the principles and tools used by the open source software community to large enterprises.
After 8 years leading CollabNet as its CTO, Brian left to work on the 2008 Obama campaign as a technology advisor, and then at the Office of Science and Technology Policy at the White House, developing strategies for open access to data and APIs. Later he advised the Department of Health and Human Services on the launch of two Open Source software projects designed to accelerate the adoption of standards for the exchange of electronic health records. In 2011 he moved to Geneva to start a 20-month stint as CTO at the World Economic Forum, where he rebooted a 30 year old legacy environment with open software and open thinking. Brian is now back in San Francisco, and remains an advisor to the WEF. Brian also is on the Boards of Director at the Mozilla Foundation, Benetech, and CollabNet.
Dash was an advisor to the Obama White House’s Office of Digital Strategy, and today advises major startups and non-profits including Medium, DonorsChoose, and Project Include. He also serves as a board member for companies like Stack Overflow, the world’s largest community for computer programmers, and non-profits like the Data & Society Research Institute, which examines the impact of tech on society and culture, and the Lower East Side Girls Club, which serves girls and families in need in New York City.
As a writer and artist, Dash has been a contributing editor and monthly columnist for Wired, has had his works exhibited in the New Museum of Contemporary Art, and collaborated with Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda on one of the most popular Spotify playlists of 2018. In 2013, Time named @anildash one of the best accounts on Twitter, and he is the only person ever retweeted by both Bill Gates and Prince, a succinct summarization of Dash’s interests. Dash has addressed events ranging from the Aspen Ideas Festival to SXSW, lectured at universities ranging from Harvard to NYU to Berkeley, made TV appearances on MSNBC and CNN, and guested on dozens of high-profile podcasts.
Dash is based in New York City, where he lives with his wife Alaina Browne and their son Malcolm. Dash has never played a round of golf, drank a cup of coffee, or graduated from college.
Prior to her retirement in 2015, Sarah Deutsch was Vice President and Deputy General Counsel at Verizon Communications, where she spent over 23 years in the Legal Department. She was responsible for Verizon's global IP practice, including copyrights, trademarks, patent licensing, and unfair competition. In the course of her career, Sarah also managed Verizon's privacy practice, and worked on a broad set of global intellectual property policy issues, including Internet policy, online liability, and advocacy. Sarah was one of five negotiators for the U.S. telecommunications industry in the negotiations that lead to the passage of the DMCA. She also served as a Private Sector Advisor to U.S. Delegation to WIPO Copyright Treaties and to the G8 Cybercrime Conference.
Sarah was the 2014 recipient of the Managing IP In-house Counsel Award at the America's Women in Business Law Awards. In 2009, she received Public Knowledge's President's Award for Extraordinary Dedication to Protecting the Free Flow of Information Over the Internet.
Prior to Verizon, Sarah was an associate in the law firm of Morgan, Lewis and Bockius. She holds a J.D. from American University, Washington College of Law and a B.A. from Emory University. In addition to her current legal and policy advocacy work, Sarah serves on the Board of the National Center for Health Research and is an avid professional photographer. Sarah previously served on EFF's Board in 2005-2006.
David Farber is Distinguished Professor at Keio University in Tokyo, Japan.
Career Professor of Computer Science and Public Policy in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University holding secondary appointments in the Heinz School of Public Policy and the Engineering Public Policy Group. In 2003, he retired as the Alfred Fitler Moore Professor of Telecommunication Systems at the University of Pennsylvania where he held appointments as Professor of Business and Public Policy at the Wharton School of Business and as a Faculty Associate of the Annenberg School of Communications. In 2000, he was appointed to be Chief Technologist at the US Federal Communications Commission while on leave from UPenn for one year ending in early June 2001. While at UPenn, he co-directed The Penn Initiative on Markets, Technology and Policy. He was also Director of the Distributed Systems Laboratory - DSL where he managed leading edge research in Ultra High Speed Networking. He is a Visiting Professor of the Center for Global Communications of Japan -- Glocom of the International University of Japan, a Member of the Markle Foundation Taskforce on National Security, and a Member of the Advisory Boards of both the Center for Democracy and Technology and EPIC. He is a Fellow of both the ACM and the IEEE and was the recipient of the 1995 ACM Sigcomm Award for life long contributions to the computer communications field. He was awarded in 1997 the prestigious John Scott Award for Contributions to Humanity.
Brewster Kahle, director and co-founder of the Internet Archive, has been working to provide universal access to all human knowledge for more than fifteen years.
Since the mid-1980s, Kahle has focused on developing transformational technologies for information discovery and digital libraries. In 1989 Kahle invented the Internet's first publishing system, WAIS (Wide Area Information Server) system and in 1989, founded WAIS Inc., a pioneering electronic publishing company that was sold to America Online in 1995. In 1996, Kahle founded the Internet Archive, the largest publicly accessible, privately funded digital archive in the world. At the same time, he co-founded Alexa Internet in April 1996, which was sold to Amazon.com in 1999. Alexa's services are bundled into more than 80% of Web browsers.
Kahle earned a B.S. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1982. As a student, he studied artificial intelligence with Marvin Minsky and W. Daniel Hillis. In 1983, Kahle helped start Thinking Machines, a parallel supercomputer maker, serving there as lead engineer for six years. He is profiled in Digerati: Encounters with the Cyber Elite (HardWired, 1996). He was selected as a member of the Upside 100 in 1997, Micro Times 100 in 1996 and 1997, and Computer Week 100 in 1995.
Yoshi Kohno is a professor in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington, where he is also the Associate Director for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Access. He has adjunct appointments in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, the School of Information, and the School of Law. His research focuses on helping protect the security, privacy, and safety of users of current and future generation technologies. Kohno is a recipient of the Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, the U.S. National Science Foundation CAREER Award, the Technology Review TR-35 Young Innovator Award, and the Golden Goose Award. Kohno has authored more than a dozen award papers, has presented his research to the U.S. House of Representatives, had his research profiled in the NOVA ScienceNOW “Can Science Stop Crime?” documentary and the NOVA “CyberWar Threat” documentary, and is a past chair of the USENIX Security Symposium. Kohno is the co-author of the book Cryptography Engineering, co-editor of the anthology Telling Stories, and author of the novella Our Reality. Kohno co-directs the University of Washington Computer Security & Privacy Research Lab and the Tech Policy Lab. Kohno was a founding member of the National Academies Forum on Cyber Resilience and is currently a member of the USENIX Security Steering Committee. Kohno received his Ph.D. from the University of California at San Diego.
Pamela Samuelson is a Professor at the University of California at Berkeley with a joint appointment in the School of Information Management and Systems and the School of Law, where she is Co-Director of the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology. Her principal area of expertise is intellectual property law, and she has written and spoken extensively about the challenges that new information technologies pose for traditional legal regimes. In 1997, she was named a Fellow of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and has also been a Fellow of the Association of Computing Machinery. In 1998, the National Law Journal named her as one of the 50 most outstanding women lawyers in the U.S. She is a member of the American Law Institute and of the Board of Directors for the Northern California chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. As a Contributing Editor of the computing professionals' journal, Communications of the ACM, Pam writes a regular "Legally Speaking" column. A 1976 graduate of Yale Law School, she practiced law as an associate with the New York law firm Willkie Farr & Gallagher before turning to more academic pursuits. From 1981 through June 1996, she was a member of the faculty at the University of Pittsburgh Law School, from which she visited at Columbia, Cornell, and Emory Law Schools.
Bruce Schneier is an internationally renowned security technologist, called a "security guru" by The Economist. He is the author of 14 books -- including the New York Times best-seller Data and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World -- as well as hundreds of articles, essays, and academic papers. His influential newsletter "Crypto-Gram" and blog "Schneier on Security" are read by over 250,000 people. Schneier is a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, a fellow at the Belfer Center at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, and a board member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. He is also a special advisor to IBM Security and the Chief Technology Officer of Resilient. Photo by Josh More.
Gigi Sohn is a Distinguished Fellow at the Georgetown Law Institute for Technology Law & Policy and a Benton Senior Fellow and Public Advocate. She is one of the nation’s leading public advocates for open, affordable and democratic communications networks. From 2013-2016, Gigi was Counselor to the former Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Tom Wheeler. She advised the Chairman on a wide range of Internet, telecommunications and media issues, representing him and the FCC in a variety of public forums around the country as well as serving as the primary liaison between the Chairman’s office and outside stakeholders. From 2001-2013, Gigi served as the Co-Founder and CEO of Public Knowledge, a leading telecommunications, media and technology policy advocacy organization. She was previously a Project Specialist in the Ford Foundation’s Media, Arts and Culture unit and Executive Director of the Media Access Project, a public interest law firm.
Shari Steele was EFF's Executive Director for 15 years before retiring in 2015 and joining the Board of Directors. Shari served as EFF's Legal Director for eight years before she was named ED. She is also co-founder of Bridges.org, a nonprofit working to ensure sound technology policy in developing nations. She has spoken widely on civil liberties law in newly emerging technologies, including on the CBS Evening News, C-SPAN's Washington Journal, The Today Show, CNN, the BBC, and National Public Radio. As EFF's Legal Director, she advised the NTIA on hate crimes in telecommunications, the U.S. Sentencing Commission on sentencing guidelines for the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and the No Electronic Theft Act, and the National Research Council on U.S. encryption policy. She has spoken about Internet law as part of the Smithsonian Institution's lecture series on the Internet, the ABA's TechWorld Conference, the National Law Journal's annual Computer Law Conference, and the National Forum for Women Corporate Counsel. A graduate of Widener University School of Law, Shari later served as a teaching fellow at Georgetown University Law Center, where she earned an LL.M. degree in Advocacy. Ms. Steele also holds a Master of Science degree in Instructional Media from West Chester University.
James Vasile's work centers on improving access to technology and reducing centralized control over the infrastructure of our daily lives.
He is a partner at Open Tech Strategies, a company that offers advice and services to organizations that make strategic use of free and open source software. Vasile has 20 years’ experience as an open source user, developer, advocate, and advisor. He is dedicated to using the dynamics of open source communities to challenge existing structures into sharing access, control, and resources.
Vasile was the founding director of the Open Internet Tools Project, which was the launching pad for community-based projects such as the Circumvention Tech Festival, which later became the influential Internet Freedom Festival, and Techno-Activism Third Mondays, a meetup that gathered people in over 20 cities around the world every month. He serves on the boards of Brave New Software, which makes the Lantern censorship circumvention tool downloaded 100 million times around the world, and Horizons Media, which supports the study of the artistic and scientific uses of psychedelics. Previously, Vasile was a Senior Fellow at the Software Freedom Law Center and a director of the FreedomBox Foundation. He helped create Open Source Matters, the non-profit behind Joomla, where he was an early board member.
Jonathan Zittrain is the George Bemis Professor of International Law at Harvard Law School and the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, Professor of Computer Science at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Vice Dean for Library and Information Resources for the Harvard Law School Library, and co-founder and Faculty Director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society. His research interests include battles for control of digital property and content, cryptography, electronic privacy, the roles of intermediaries within Internet architecture, human computing, and the useful and unobtrusive deployment of technology in education.
He performed the first large-scale tests of Internet filtering in China and Saudi Arabia, and as part of the OpenNet Initiative co-edited a series of studies of Internet filtering by national governments: Access Denied: The Practice and Policy of Global Internet Filtering; Access Controlled: The Shaping of Power, Rights, and Rule in Cyberspace; and Access Contested: Security, Identity, and Resistance in Asian Cyberspace.
He is a member of the Board of Directors of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Board of Advisors for Scientific American. He has served as a Trustee of the Internet Society and as a Forum Fellow of the World Economic Forum, which named him a Young Global Leader. He was a Distinguished Scholar-in-Residence at the Federal Communications Commission, where he previously chaired the FCC’s Open Internet Advisory Committee. His book The Future of the Internet -- And How to Stop It predicted the end of general purpose client computing and the corresponding rise of new gatekeepers. That and other works may be found at JZ.org.
