Panel: "Stories from the Field—A View of the Internet from the Global South"

Matt is a software engineer with a passion for exploring possibilities at the intersection of human rights and emerging technology. With a background in international human rights works as well as the Drupal and Angular open source communities, he is excited to be volunteering as a coordinator of the humanitarian track of the Decentralized Web Summit.

Sarah Bowers works as an Outreach Coordinator for NetFreedom Pioneers. With a background in international education and nonprofit work, Sarah’s passion lies in cross-cultural inquiry and analyzing the ethics and effectiveness of international development efforts. With these interests she has joined NFP in rethinking the social impact of technology. 

Nicolás Pace is a member of AlterMundi A.C., a grassroots organization supporting rural underserved communities in their pursue for creating their own telecommunications infrastructure, their own piece of internet. In doing so, Nicolas has traveled to more than 15 countries, getting to know most of the community networks out there, and getting to understand the diversity and complexity of the matter. One of the latest actions he has been undertaking has been working together with REDES A.C., a grassroots organization from Mexico in supporting first nation communities. Within AlterMundi he has also been involved in the Decentralized Repository of Culture, a P2P project that tries to find a way around the digital culture distribution, involving everyone in the process: creators, curators, enthusiasts.

Cecilia Mwende Maundu is broadcast journalist working for the Kenya Broadcasting Corporation, which is the state broadcaster in Kenya. Cecilia is also a filmmaker with her interest being documentary filmmaking. Ms Maundu is a graduate of the University of Nairobi where she did a Bachelor of Arts and later proceeded to do master of Arts in communication at the same university. She is currently pursuing her Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D) in communication Studies at Moi University in Kenya. 

Ms Maundu is an independent digital security consultant and runs an independent digital security firm. She trains people, in particular women, journalists’ human rights defenders and members of the LGBT community how to stay safe online where they are the most vulnerable. Cecilia is on the quest to make sure that even the most vulnerable feel safe online. She is also a User experience expert (UX), and leads trainings on collecting feedback and evaluates how effective online security tools are. All this in creating a holistic approach to digital security. Cecilia is addicted to everything on digital security!

​Nighat Dad is the ​Founder and executive director of the Digital Rights Foundation (DRF), Pakistan, She has run the DRF since it was established in 2012, and has been a practicing lawyer since 2007, where she worked on civil​,​ criminal​ and now cyber​ litigation​. ​

Nighat has been an affiliate for Internet and Society at the Berkman Klein Center at Harvard University from 2016 to 201​8​, USA. Prior to this, she completed a certification in Internet Governance from the Diplo Foundation in 2011. She was TIME Magazine’s next generation leader in 2015, and received the Tulip Award​ from Dutch Govt​ as well as the Atlantic Council Freedom Award in 2016. She was a TED Fellow in 2017, and is on the World Economic Forum (WEF)’s Young Global Leaders 2018 list.​ Nighat has also established regions first cyber harassment helpline in Pakistan in 2016.​