Democracy, Violent Extremism & Tech-Enabled Harms

Sara Qasem is a Palestinian poet, community advocate and educator based in Ōtautahi, Aotearoa New Zealand. Her writing moves between memory, testimony and resistance– exploring what it means to carry homeland, grief and belonging across diaspora. Through poetry, essays and public speaking, Sara works to ensure diasporic stories are neither silenced nor forgotten, believing that language can serve as both archive and lifeline.

Sara’s work has been published and performed across Aotearoa– frequently speaking on issues of identity, community and justice. Alongside her creative practice, she contributes to advocacy and policy conversations through her work connected to The Christchurch Call and wider community initiatives addressing hate and violence.

Guided by her experience as a Palestinian and Muslim woman, Sara writes toward collective memory and survival, holding space for grief while working to ensure the conditions that enable hatred and violence are not repeated.

Shruthi specializes in strategy for democracy & civil rights.  For the past decade, she led the gender equity practice at Dalberg Advisors, where she worked with multilateral clients (e.g., the Executive Office of the UN Secretary General, Spotlight Initiative), civil society organizations (e.g., the National Domestic Workers Alliance, FUTURES Without Violence, the Global Fund for Widows) and philanthropic organizations (several large and small family offices and institutional philanthropies).  She serves on the board of Equimundo, Women Donors Network, and Rise Up Together.

Felicity Mulford leads work tackling Technology-Facilitated Gender-Based Violence (TFGBV) and partners with academics to test AI systems. Through this work, Felicity combines her commitment to gender equality and gender-informed tech development with data-driven insights to strengthen evidence and empower communities.

At the Centre for Information Resilience (CIR), she leads a TFGBV programme in Ethiopia (evidence gathering, community building, and designing youth-led toolkits) and research on gendered abuse in the 2024 US elections. She spearheads the organisation’s annual “16 Days of Activism Against GBV” campaigns and the “Gender Lens” initiative – a dedicated hub for investigating and exposing Gender-Based Violence through digital investigations.

Felicity is a Hillary Rodham Clinton Global Challenges Scholar and worked with international lawyers to investigate war crimes. She holds a BA and two MAs (International Relations & Law), with multiple publications and academic awards. Beyond work, Felicity manages a music event to raise funds for various charities.

Odanga Madung is a Kenyan data journalist and researcher whose work examines how digital platforms reshape power, democracy, and public accountability. He is the co-founder and Managing Director of Odipo Dev, a Nairobi-based media and impact think tank, and has written for outlets including The Guardian, WIRED and CNN on disinformation, platform governance, and the political economy of attention. His focus is strengthening the integrity of the information environment and understanding how media systems shape democratic outcomes—particularly from the vantage point of the Global South.

He was also a Mozilla Fellow and has helped surface and challenge disinformation-for-hire ecosystems and advance real-world accountability conversations with major tech platforms. He’s also currently on the boards of DW Akademie and Amnesty International Kenya.

With a decade of experience in the public sector and academia, Hannah is an expert in advancing gender equality. Currently, she leads The Jo Cox Foundation’s policy development and advocacy to address abuse in public life and strengthen democracy. Her unique background spans local, national and international policy. She has significant experience advising and implementing strategic priorities, including at the United Nations and UK House of Commons. Originally from Scotland, she pursued her undergraduate studies at Harvard University. While also working, she studied for her MSc in Gender, Policy and Inequalities at the London School of Economics and completed her DPhil (PhD) at the University of Oxford.

Vidhya Ramalingam is Founder and CEO of Moonshot, an organization empowering people to thrive online. Under her leadership, Moonshot has pioneered a proven model to offer lifesaving services online to people considering violence; collaborations with tech companies like Spotify and Google to ensure safer user experiences; and critical support to institutions and individuals facing online abuse. Moonshot has twice been named to Fast Company’s World’s Most Innovative Companies list. Vidhya is also recognized internationally for her role leading policy responses to terrorism. Following the 2011 attacks in Norway, she led the European Union’s first intergovernmental initiative on white supremacist terrorism. She has been recognized by Fortune’s Most Powerful Women and sits on Spotify’s Safety Advisory Council. Watch her TED talk: The real-world danger of online myths.

Andrew Pel is Head of Campaigns at Moonshot, where he develops evidence-based interventions for online harms. His work addresses violent misogyny, extremism, disinformation, and other challenges young men face online. In Canada, Andrew leads multi-sectoral programs that connect individuals engaging with violent extremist content to confidential support services. He also develops gender-based violence and suicide prevention campaigns that connect people in crisis to local responders. More recently, Andrew ran a global media literacy initiative for Google, reaching over 200 million people across Europe and Indonesia and helping citizens recognize online manipulation tactics. Andrew is committed to translating research into solutions that engage men and boys in positive, pro-social ways.

Cynthia Miller-Idriss is a Professor in the Schools of Public Affairs and Education at the American University, where she is also the founding director and chief vision officer in the Polarization and Extremism Research and Innovation Lab (PERIL). She writes frequently for the public, most recently in Man Up: The New Misogyny and the Rise of Violent Extremism,  as an opinion columnist for MS Now, and in recent by-lines in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Foreign Affairs, The Washington Post, Politico, and more.Her current book-in-progress, on how gender is dividing a new generation, reports on qualitative research with young men across five countries.

Sasha Havlicek is a social and policy entrepreneur who, for the last two decades, has incubated and scaled global initiatives to counter the rise of weaponised hate, disinformation and extremism, on- and offline. As founding CEO of the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, she has led the build-out of ISD’s advanced digital analytics capability designed to detect and mitigate information threats to democracy, public safety and national security. Spearheading ISD’s extensive partnerships with governments, cities, businesses and communities, Sasha oversees teams delivering research, policy advisory, training, digital literacy and communications programming around the world.

Sasha has advised a range of governments at the highest levels, has testified before US Congress and the UK Parliament, and is a regular commentator in the media (CNN, BBC, Channel 4 News and other networks). She is a member of the European Council on Foreign Relations and serves on the Advisory Boards of the Global Internet Forum on Counter-Terrorism, the Christchurch Call and the Global Partnership for Action against Tech Facilitated Gender Based Violence. She is a founding board member of the Forum on Information and Democracy and a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Coalition on Internet Safety.

Dr. Emma Fulu is a feminist activist, researcher, and entrepreneur who has dedicated her life to advancing gender equality and ending violence against women and girls. She is the founder and CEO of the Equality Institute, a global organisation dedicated to creating a more just and inclusive world that has worked in more than 30 countries. Emma has led some of the world’s largest studies on violence against women, including at the United Nations, and co-founded VOICE, supporting women and girls in crisis settings. A TEDx speaker and writer with a PhD from the University of Melbourne, she brings together data, storytelling, and lived experience to inspire change. Emma has advised governments, UN agencies, and global brands, and her work has been featured on Al Jazeera, BBC, CNN, and beyond. She believes deeply in the power of evidence, activism, and bold communication to create lasting change.