Marianne Elliott
Chair
New Zealand
Marianne is Head of Engagement at the Te Kāhui Tika Tangata (Aotearoa New Zealand Human Rights Commission. She is a researcher and strategist with more than 25 years experience using research, advocacy and campaigning to promote human rights and democracy. Trained as a lawyer, she has lived and worked in the Gaza Strip, Timor Leste and Afghanistan, as well as New Zealand. Marianne’s strengths are in strategic approaches to system change, including fundraising, research, narratives, advocacy, campaigning and movement building. Her research has included work on digital inclusion, digital threats to democracy, mental health and criminal justice. Marianne is also co-founder of ActionStation Aotearoa and The Workshop and has more than a decade experience in governance roles in advocacy, campaigning and movement building organisations.
Heidi Tworek
Advisory Board Chair (maternity leave)
Canada
Dr. Heidi Tworek is Associate Professor of History and Public Policy at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. She has briefed or advised officials and policymakers from multiple European and North American governments on media, cybersecurity, disinformation, democracy, and the digital economy. She served on the steering committee of the Transatlantic High-Level Working Group on Content Moderation and Freedom of Expression. Her work covers health communications and platform governance.
She is a non-resident fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States and the Canadian Global Affairs Institute as well as a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Her latest book – News from Germany: The Competition to Control World Communications, 1900-1945 (Harvard University Press, 2019) – received awards from the Wiener Holocaust Library and the Business History Conference.
Nina Santos
Advisory Board Member
Brazil
Nina Santos is Executive Director of Aláfia Lab and researcher at the Brazilian National Institute of Science and Technology in Digital Democracy (INCT.DD), and at the Centre d’Analyse et de Recherche Interdisciplinaires sur les Médias (Sorbonne). She is a member of the International Panel on the Information Environment and several national and international coalitions. She is also a professor at universities in Brazil and France and has published the book “Social media logics: Visibility and mediation in the 2013 Brazilian protests”.
Sherylle Dass
Advisory Board Member
South Africa
Sherylle Dass is a practicing Legal Practitioner admitted in the High Court of South Africa. She has been practicing law for the past 24 years and has been a refugee law practitioner and public interest litigator for the last 18 years in the public interest NGO sector. Sherylle is currently the Regional Director of the Legal Resource Centre (LRC) based in Cape Town and leads our Democratising Big Tech project. The LRC is a member of both the International Network of Civil Liberties Organisations (INCLO), along with 14 other member countries in the global north and south and is a member of the African Internet Rights Alliance (AIRA). Sherylle is the LRC focal point in AIRA and INCLO’s Surveillance and Human Rights pillar.