Dr. Vanessa Liston is co-founder and CEO of CiviQ, a company delivering innovations in public participation and deliberation. CiviQ’s mission is the creation of an open data source on public opinion and changes in social perspectives to help respond to complex social and environmental challenges. Vanessa holds a PhD in Political Science from Trinity College Dublin, Ireland, where she was a Government of Ireland Scholar. She publishes regularly in international journals on development issues, deliberative democracy, Web 2.0 technologies, and political system innovation. Vanessa also has a background in international development and a management consulting career in Accenture and Cambridge Technology Partners.  In 2014 she was listed by TechnologyVoice as one of Ireland’s Talented 38 Technology Women.