Mr Claudio AGOSTI, Italy, Co-founder, developer and advocate of GlobaLeaks

Claudio Agosti is a software developer and privacy analyst. 16 years ago Claudio was developing software on computer security. Now, like the internet, he has grown up, and has started to be more concerned about the security of the humans behind the computer. At Tactical Tech he currently leads the Trackography project. Outside of Tactical Tech, he works on GlobaLeaks as co-founder, developer, and advocate.

Mr Fouad AHIDAR, Belgium, 1st Vice-President of the Brussels Parliament

Fouad Ahidar is the 1st Vice-President of the Brussels parliament and member of the Flemish Socialist Party Belgian SP.a for the Brussels-Capital Region. Engaged in the field of discrimination, he is a member of the Commission on equal opportunities between men and women, the Committee on Home Affairs, the Committee on European Affairs and the Housing Committee in the Parliament of Brussels. Active for more than 20 years in Belgian politics, Fouad Ahidar also specializes on the issue of immigration in Belgium and on the rights of aliens.

Dr. Qanta AHMED, USA, Associate Professor of Medicine, State University of New York, Author of “In the Land of Invisible Women”, Journalist and Human Rights Advocate

Dr. Ahmed is an observing Muslim, an academic physician and opinion journalist. Her first book, In the Land of Invisible Women details her time in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.  She is a prolific contributor to dozens of media outlets in the American, British, Australian and Israeli media and an accomplished international speaker addressing both academic and political audiences. Her articles have been published in The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, The Spectator in Britain, and many others. She is a sought-after political commentator on television and radio including CNN, BBC World, the Fox Network and many others. She is committed to defending the vulnerable against Islamism.

Ms Tanja AITAMURTO, Finland, Deputy Director and a Brown Fellow at the Brown Institute for Media Innovation at the School of Engineering at Stanford University

Dr. Tanja Aitamurto is the Deputy Director and a Brown Fellow at the Brown Institute for Media Innovation at the School of Engineering at Stanford. She examines how collective intelligence, whether gathered by crowdsourcing, crowdfunding or co-creation, impacts journalism, governance and product design, particularly media innovations. Tanja is the author of Crowdsourcing for Democracy: New Era in Policy-Making. She has lead the design and implementation of the Finnish Experiment, a pioneering case in crowdsourcing policymaking. She advises and studies Open Government projects in several countries, the projects including topics such as participatory budgeting and crowdsourced legislation. She has attended meetings and given talks about her research at the White House, the Wikimedia Foundation, OECD, the Council of Europe and in several Parliaments and Governments, including those of Canada, Austria and Finland. More about Tanja's work at www.tanjaaitamurto.com.

Ms Ruhat Sena AKSENER, Turkey, Campaigns and Advocacy Director, Amnesty International, Turkey

Ruhat Sena Aksener is the Campaigns and Advocacy Director in Amnesty International Turkey Section and working as the manager of the campaigns/advocacy/media-communications team of the section. After graduating from Middle East Technical University/Ankara Political Science and Public Administration Department, she received a MS degree in Gender Studies. She has been implementing and administrating campaigns at Amnesty since 2005, specializing on freedom of expression, women’s rights, impunity, trial observation, fair trails, right to organization, Economical Social Rights, discrimination and LGBTI rights. Her interests are mainly on human rights, impunity, discrimination and freedom of expression.

Lord John ALDERDICE, United Kingdom, Member of the House of Lords

John, Lord Alderdice was a consultant psychiatrist in Belfast and an academic with appointments in Belfast the USA, and currently, the University of Oxford where he is Director of the Centre for the Resolution of Intractable Conflict at Harris Manchester College.  He was from 1989 to 1998 the Leader of the Alliance Party and a negotiator of the 1998 Belfast Agreement; then Speaker of the new Northern Ireland Assembly; one of the four international commissioners on terrorism and security in Ireland until 2011.  He was also President of Liberal International, (the world-wide federation of liberal political parties) from 2005 to 2009; and from 2010 to 2014 Convenor (Chairman) of the Liberal Democrat Parliamentary Party in the House of Lords.

Ms Irina ALEXIEVA, Director, Bulgarian School of Politics

Irina Alexieva is Executive Director of the Bulgarian School of Politics "Dimitry Panitza", as well as a Member of the Board of the Bulgarian Civil Society House and of the Scientific Committee of the World Forum for Democracy. She is a well-known business journalist, having interviewed some of the most influential global leaders. Irina Alexieva has been involved in both TV and radio productions and is an author of several documentaries. She has a PhD in Public Communications and Information Studies.

Mr Jacob APPELBAUM, USA, Independent security researcher and journalist, developer and advocate with the Tor Project

Jacob Appelbaum is an American independent journalist, computer security researcher and hacker. He was employed by the University of Washington, and is a core member of the Tor project, a free software network designed to provide online anonymity. He is currently living in Berlin and he has been contributing extensively as a journalist to the publication of documents revealed by Edward Snowden in June 2013. In 2013, at Chaos Communication Congress, he presented documents revealed by Snowden, showing that the NSA can turn iPhones into eavesdropping tools and has developed devices to harvest electronic information from a computer even if not online. Appelbaum, under the handle "ioerror", has been an active member of the Cult of the Dead Cow hacker collective since 2008, and is the co-founder of the San Francisco hackerspace Noisebridge.

Mr Manuel ARRIAGA, Portugal, Visiting Research Professor, New York University

Manuel Arriaga is a Visiting Research Professor at New York University and a Fellow of the University of Cambridge. He is the author of Rebooting Democracy: A Citizen's Guide to Reinventing Politics, which has been published in several European countries and has received endorsements from figures as diverse as leading political scientists, award-winning journalists and Hollywood comedian Russell Brand.

Ms Yvonne ATAKORA OBUOBISA, Ghana, Director of Public Prosecutions, Ministry of Justice & Attorney-General’s Department

Yvonne Atakora Obuobisa has been the Acting Director of Public Prosecutions since April 2015. Prior to this position she was a Chief State Attorney and Head of the International Cooperation Unit of the Ministry of Justice. She has worked as a prosecutor for nineteen years and has specialized in prosecuting economic crimes including money laundering offences and cybercrime. She has trained as an assessor in the Anti-money laundering and Countering of Terrorist Financing regime for the Intergovernmental Action Group against Money Laundering and Financing of terrorism (GIABA). In 2010, she was the legal expert in the team that assessed Liberia in its AML/CFT regime. She has also gained considerable experience in handling international criminal law cases. She is a listed counsel to the International Criminal Court and a lecturer in criminal procedure at the Ghana School of Law.