Board Candidates Elections 2019

Board Candidates Elections 2019

The Nominating Committee (NomCom) 2019 received several extremely strong applications this year and would like to thank all of those who took the time to apply.

Candidate Slate

The final candidate slate can be found below. If you have questions for these five candidates, please add your question in the comment field.

Vote Confirmation

As there are no contested seats for this election, we will ask chapter members, via email, to simply confirm that they agree that these five candidates should join the SF Bay Area ISOC Chapter Board for a two-year term (2020-2022). Chapter members will receive their email during the vote confirmation period (December 11 – December 20).

More information about the election process can be found here.

Robin Gross

I am an intellectual property attorney in SF with 20+ years working on Internet law & policy advocacy. I’ve been an active participant in ICANN’s policy development process & leader in its noncommercial user community since 2004; I currently serve as a representative on the Executive Committee of ICANN’s Noncommercial Stakeholder Group. In 2002 I founded IP Justice, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit devoted to balanced international intellectual property rights; previously I was the 1st IPR attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). I’ve taught at Santa Clara Univ. School of Law & lectured at Stanford, & UC Berkeley on Internet legal issues. I was appointed to the advisory group of Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in 2006 & have spoken semi-regularly at the annual UN conference since then on issues such as access to knowledge, digital rights, & human rights online. I’ve previously served on advisory boards of nonprofits Public Interest Registry, CPSR-Peru, & the Union for Public Domain.

My plan to contribute to the Board:

I propose to focus my contribution on two specific points. Firstly, I believe I can contribute to the chapter’s policy development efforts, including connecting outside legal expertise to the chapter’s policy discussions as well as offering my own legal knowledge and experience to the chapter’s efforts to promote the health and growth of a free and open Internet. Secondly, I’d like to assist the chapter with membership outreach to local civil society organizations and individuals interested in Internet policy development. As an active participant in the San Francisco Bay Area digital rights community for more than 20 years, I believe I could connect the chapter with new and diverse participants who can make valuable contributions to the chapter for years to come.

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Vipul Singh

Vipul has over 10 years of experience in data infrastructure projects. He is currently managing multiple projects in Data Governance and Data Infrastructure domain at Yelp.
With expertise in building large scale Distributed Systems, leading and driving large projects from concept to fruition, Vipul is passionate about data, product development, and helping users make data-driven decisions. Vipul is also involved in a lot of volunteer activities. He is currently the Chief of Staff at Columbia Alumni Northern California Association, where he is responsible for coordinating events across the bay area with various directors. Vipul is also the CTO for Kvest Limited, focussing on peer-to-peer travelling.

My plan to contribute to the Board:

I would like to contribute to help in the efforts of build, promote, and defend the internet. I have been working and dealing with Data Governance, and I believe my prior experience might be helpful for me to contribute. I am specifically passionate about promoting security and the internet model of networking.

I am very passionate about Data, and Product Management. With my current experience as Chief of Staff, CTO etc, I believe I will can be very instrumental in driving large scale projects/initiatives.

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Supheakmungkol Sarin

Supheakmungkol Sarin is currently a Research and Engineering Program Manager at Google AI. He has 10+ years of experience working in a variety of roles in Academia, Consulting, R&D and program management covering a broad spectrum of skills. He is particularly interested in Internet for all and in building technologies that work for everyone. From 2013 to 2018, he managed Google language technology research programs for emerging markets including India, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Nigeria. Supheakmungkol holds a Ph.D. in Global Information and Telecommunication Studies from Waseda University. He is an IEEE Senior Member.

My plan to contribute to the Board:

I consider Internet for all and building technologies that work for everyone as my personal goals. Being from Cambodia, I see the real impact of access to information and technologies on the people there. To achieve these goals, my focus will be on designing and implementing programs that help more people getting access to information, building local communities & ecosystems as well as leveraging R&D, collaboration & Open Data. The programs will bring together stakeholders from all sectors including public, private, non-profits, academia, international organizations and civil society.

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Jessica Dickinson Goodman

Jessica Dickinson Goodman bridges the worlds of technology and politics. Starting with an internship at 15 with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, continuing through her undergrad degree at Carnegie Mellon followed by an internship at Harvard Law School’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, Jessica works to bring the best of both these worlds to what she does.

Jessica’s first job out of college was running national online communications in DC for the largest anti-human trafficking NGO serving survivors of all forms of trafficking. There, she built tools to track traffickers, ran dozens of successful advocacy campaigns, raised 500K/yr online, and taught self-defense to clients who heard she had gotten her black belt when she was 17.

In 2018, inspired by the team she mentored through the US State Department’s TechWomen program, she built up her technical skills taking Java, Python, and C++ simultaneously and was named one of Foothill College’s Top STEM students.

My plan to contribute to the Board:

I am impressed by all of of the hard, process-building work the current board has done and would be honored to build on that work. Starting with what I can contribute: I am good at growing and sustaining communities. For example, when I joined the Mountain View Odd Fellows lodge in 2016, they had ~25 members with a median age of about ~72. I honed in on a major asset of the lodge: our 1909 historic building in the heart of Silicon Valley, on Mountain View’s Castro Street, that was being used maybe 5hrs/mo. With the support of the membership, I began to recruit existing groups to use the space for free, believing that people would join an organization that was already full of life. Today, the calendar looks like this: http://bit.ly/37Bf0MM and we have increased our membership by 50%, nearly all recruited from groups using the lodge, and nearly all of whom are women, queer people like me, people of color, or all three. The median age of the new members is about ~30. Here is a speech I gave about this work at a national political convention this summer: http://bit.ly/34xCznC.

I would bring these same positivity, focus, and community building skills to the Internet Society board. I would be interested in supporting community outreach and helping organize events with partners, students, and professionals around issues of digital inclusion and literacy. As you can see from my bio, I have a strong interest in policy and privacy, particularly in the ways we can include unheard voices in the next generation of internet policy. As a TechWomen Impact Coach and an Arabic speaker who has traveled to a third of the Middle East in the past decade, I am an advocate for expanding affordable internet access to everyone. I would be happy to answer any questions on my candidacy.

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Richard Whitt

Richard Whitt is an experienced technology attorney and business thinker/creator/doer. He possesses uniquely deep, broad, high-level expertise encompassing emerging tech platforms.

Richard currently heads the GLIA Foundation (www.glia.net), a new not-for-profit focused on building trustworthy and accountable Web ecosystems. He also advises tech stakeholders on developing governance and accountability measures for AI/ML, IoT, cloud, blockchain, and data platforms, as well as securing regulated business inputs such as broadband access and spectrum. Previously, Richard spent eleven-plus years with Google, most recently as corporate director for strategic initiatives in Mountain View headquarters.

Richard has a proven ability to translate commercial priorities into market and policy successes. He is adept at managing people and resources in fast-changing environments. A noted spokesperson, speaker, and author, Richard is an honors graduate from Georgetown University Law Center.

My plan to contribute to the Board:

As a returning member of the Board, I would be interested in focusing on the public interest mission of ISOC, and how the Bay Area chapter can translate that mission into meaningful action. The recent public controversy over the sale of the .org domain highlights the importance of renewing that crucial sense of serving the public interest.

In my past two years on the Board, I have contributed to the development of several educational events, provided outreach to potential sponsors and produced blog posts. I would propose to work on similar activities going forward.