Web Applications Tackle Social and Global Issues

Peter Deitz

Peter Deitz is the founder of Social Actions and the author of a blog called About Micro-Philanthropy.

Ian Elwood

Ian Elwood of CorpWatch is the Project Manager of Crocodyl.

Janessa Goldbeck

Janessa Goldbeck is the Director of Membership at the Genocide Intervention Network. A recent graduate of Northwestern University, Janessa holds a Bachelor of Science in Magazine Journalism, a certificate in African Studies, and a certificate in Sustainable Development from the School for International Training in Uganda. Janessa is a former member of the national STAND Managing Committee where she served as STAND's first National Outreach Coordinator and oversaw the efforts of STAND chapters at more than 500 schools nationwide. Since graduating, Janessa has produced several short films on the student anti-genocide movement and appeared at numerous conferences, forums, and trainings on behalf of STAND and the Genocide Intervention Network.

David Kobia

David Kobia is the founder of www.ihavenotribe.com, TextHQ, and Mashada. He has a background in web design and application development.

JD Ross Leahy

JD Ross Leahy is the Rosetta Project Archive Manager. He holds a B.A. in Linguistics from the University of Oregon.

Michael Litz

Michael is responsible for the development, partnership relations, and operations of OneWorld in the United States. He serves on the board of OneWorld U.S. and participates in the global governance structure of the OneWorld network. Michael brings ten years of practical experience in program development and management, strategic consulting, computer networking, web development and technical training to OneWorld. Prior to OneWorld, Michael served for five years as Chief Technology Officer with the Benton Foundation where he was responsible for the Foundation's overall technology strategy and the development and incubation of new technology projects. Michael also been a technology consultant and managed information systems for nonprofits and political campaigns. Born and raised in Europe, Mike has lived and worked around the world and is fluent in three languages. He received his B.A. and M.A. degrees with honors in history from the University of Pennsylvania.

Peter Manzo

Peter Manzo has over 13 years of experience in public interest law and management. In addition to his work at the Advancement Project, he is a Senior Research Fellow at the UCLA Center for Civil Society and is the author of numerous articles and reports on legal, management, and policy issues affecting nonprofits and philanthropy. Previously, Mr. Manzo was the Executive Director and General Counsel of the Center for Nonprofit Management, where he directed the expansion of the Center's information, training, consulting, technology, and search and compensation services to nonprofits. Prior to leading the Center, Mr. Manzo was Directing Attorney of Community Development Programs for Public Counsel, the nation's largest pro bono law firm, and the Los Angeles affiliate of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, where he represented nonprofit charitable organizations in a broad range of real property, corporate, tax, and other transactional matters. Before moving into the nonprofit sector, Mr. Manzo practiced real estate and corporate law in the private sector, first at the law firm of Riordan & McKinzie, then at Tuttle & Taylor in Los Angeles. Mr. Manzo is a graduate of Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California, Berkeley; he also attended the London School of Economics, where he received a Master's degree in Political Sociology, and the University of Notre Dame, where he received a Bachelor's degree in Government. He is a member of the boards of directors of the following: National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy; PacAdvantage, a nonprofit alliance whose mission is to enable small employers throughout California to provide excellent, affordable health coverage to their employees; and United Friends of the Children, which provides transitional living assistance and job training to emancipated foster youth in Los Angeles County.

Justin Massa

Justin Massa is currently the Fair Housing Testing and Outreach Coordinator for the Chicago Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, where he has supervised the testing program, handled intake and investigation, and conducted fair housing trainings for the past two and a half years. Massa is also serving his second term as Vice President of the Chicago Area Fair Housing Alliance. Prior to working in fair housing, Justin was a Chicago Public School teacher and research analyst for the Center for New Community, where he monitored white nationalist activity and trained more than 5,000 young people on how to spot and respond to hate. He holds a BA in Political Science from Loyola University of Chicago and a MA in Teaching from National Louis University.

David Russel Moore

David Moore is the Executive Director of the Participatory Politics Foundation.

Dan Newman

Dan Newman is Co-Founder and Executive Director of MAPLight.org, a nonpartisan nonprofit illuminating the connection between money and politics in unprecedented ways. MAPLight.org's groundbreaking website reveals relationships between campaign donations and legislative votes, helping citizens and communities hold their elected officials accountable. The Sunlight Foundation called MAPLight.org "a preview of the next generation of money-and-politics reporting." Dan, an entrepreneur and political organizer, is the author of three books on speech recognition software and is the founder of Say I Can, a speech recognition firm. Dan co-founded the Berkeley Fair Elections Coalition and has served as a consultant to various political and nonprofit groups, including the Center for Voting and Democracy, Israel Venture Network, and the Mental Health Association of San Francisco. Dan received a MA in Psychology from the University of California at Berkeley, where he attended on a National Science Foundation Fellowship, and a BA in Biomedical Ethics from Brown University. He lives in Berkeley, California.

Zoli Piroska

Zoli Piroska is head of Business Development and Partnership Opportunities for Greener One.

Ben Rigby

Ben Rigby graduated from Stanford University with Honors, Distinction, and Phi Beta Kappa. He went on to co-found Akimbo Design, a web design firm that created and managed the consumer web sites for The North Face, Beringer Vineyards, and California Pizza Kitchen and completed award-winning projects for Nokia, Sony Pictures, MGM, Calvin Klein, and Macromedia. His company produced three Web design books, won dozens of awards, and had work featured in major media publications such as Newsweek, the New York Times, Washington Post, and USA Today. In 2002, Ben took a position as CTO of DFILM, a youth entertainment company creating web and mobile applications. At DFILM, he managed the launch of a youth-focused communication platform in partnership with KPN, the largest wireless operator in the Netherlands. He also launched a viral application that is consistently used by 300,000 unique users per month and has been licensed by Yahoo!, Sam Adams, IBM, the Sierra Club, and Old Navy. In 2004, Rigby founded and became co-executive director of Mobile Voter.

Michael Schnuerle

Michael Schnuerle is founder and CEO of YourMapper. Michael has over 14 years of career experience in the internet field and has had a passion for maps ever since his first bedroom was covered in nautical wallpaper. His web background runs the gamut from programming, user interface design, graphic design, information architecture, project management, and product management. Michael has worked and lived in Australia, Paris, Edinburgh, San Francisco, Lexington, and he currently resides in his hometown of Louisville, Kentucky.

Abram Stern

Abram Stern (aka aphid) is a net.artist and garden pest. His artwork primarily engages aesthetics of participation, blurring the line between author/creator and viewer/consumer. Stern has a BFA in Digital Media from San Francisco Art Institute and a MFA in Digital Arts/New Media from UC Santa Cruz. Metavid, an archive of US congressional floor proceeding video, began as the collaborative MFA thesis project of its principal participants Abram Stern and Michael Dale. Metavid appropriates C-SPAN's re-transmission of government-produced video and uses closed captions to enable timed text searches. Video is provided at two sizes, encoded in a DRM-free open source video codec. All video, associated metadata, and the project's source code are made freely available to the public.

Francine Stock

Francine Stock is an artist, curator, and historian. In 2006, she was awarded a grant from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts to create the New Orleans Virtual Archive. The NOVA will incorporate original images from the slide archive at Tulane School of Architecture with images of the city post-Katrina and plans for renewal. The NOVA will be publicly accessible through the new LUNA browser with an expected release in June 2008. Stock also serves as the Registrar for DOCOMOMO - New Orleans, an organization dedicated to the documentation and conservation of manifestations of the modern movement in New Orleans.

John Wagner

John Wagner is the Co-Founder and Design and Development for Squarepeg. Studying cognitive psychology and design at Lewis & Clark College, John wishes to merge his interests in art with his curiosity about the way that people think about and process what they see. John is also a designer, photographer, developer, bike nut, and general Portland geek.

Melinda Wittstock

Melinda Wittstock is an award-winning broadcast and print journalist with 18 years' reporting and hosting experience in the highly competitive New York, Washington, and London media markets. Her work spans BBC Radio, TV News, ABC News, National Public Radio (NPR), MSNBC/CNBC, as well as London's Times, Guardian, and Observer newspapers. After covering U.S. national politics for more than a decade, Wittstock founded Capitol News Connection (CNC), which covers Congress from a local perspective for public radio stations nationwide. In two years, Wittstock built CNC from a staff of 3 serving 10 stations to a staff of 12 serving 230 stations. CNC's daily audience is now 1.86 million (Arbitron: Spring 2006). Brought up in New York and Toronto, Wittstock graduated with an Honors B.A. in political science from McGill University (American Government, International Relations, and Political Philosophy). At McGill, she began her broadcasting career on CRFM Radio McGill as a news anchor and talk show host and also edited The McGill Daily. She moved to London and joined the London Times as a correspondent when she was just 22. She spent five years on the newspaper, breaking several major exclusive investigative political and business stories, and started working for the BBC in 1990 as a newsmagazine reporter and live radio/TV pundit. In 1994, Wittstock joined NBC Europe as a financial news anchor, and the following year became one of the main primetime hosts/anchors of BBC World, the international TV news channel, where she covered most of the big breaking news stories of the time - from the Oklahoma City bombing to the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin and the death of Princess Diana, as well as the 1996 and 2000 Presidential election campaigns and Monica Lewinsky affair. In 1998, Wittstock moved back to New York to join ABC News, anchoring the network's overnight and early morning national news programs, World News Now, and World News This Morning. She continued to report for BBC Radio and TV, creating the nightly newsmagazine USA Direct from the BBC New York Bureau, and hosting the half-hour interview program, Hard Talk, and the discussion program, The Talk Show. She joined MSNBC and CNBC as a news reporter and anchor in 1999, before coming once more to Washington in 2000 to launch and host a new live NPR morning newsmagazine for Sirius Satellite Radio. Wittstock also freelanced as a congressional reporter for CNN and The London Observer while creating Capitol News Connection, which launched June, 2003. She lives in Washington D.C. with her husband Mark McDonald, the program director of WAMU 88.5 FM, their daughter Sydney, son Matthew Finn, and amiable but opinionated golden retriever, Pundit.