Our Policy Leadership Initiative (PLI) intends to support and enhance a greater plurality of voices, identities, experiences which would enrich essential digital policy conversations, and ultimately drive meaningful policy change and shift power on the European level.
Learn more about the program below, and stay up to date by joining our announce list.
The Policy Leadership Initiative supports, educates and empowers diverse leadership by providing opportunities to develop, refine, and acquire policy skills, essential practices, and deepen strategies.
Our vision is to build a diverse and inclusive network of practitioner voices, perspectives, and experiences, which would strengthen the field and drive better digital policy outcomes that support and expand human rights for all.
Our focus will be on:
In the face of rapid technological change and complex challenges, we must develop intersectional strategies in digital policy. By empowering diverse leaders and centering affected communities' voices, we can bring about meaningful change. Aspiring leaders need support to overcome barriers, nurture their goals and be their authentic selves.
An opportunity for emerging leaders to meet, learn, and build connections with each other as they deepen their policy knowledge and enhance their policy practices. Learn more here.
Connecting policy practitioners with each other to share knowledge, offer mentorship and support.
Interactive and participatory virtual and in-person events designed to deepen, broaden, and enhance connections of a growing community of practice.
The Policy Leadership Initiative is striving to manifest a diverse and equitable community of practice by prioritising participants who have strong potential to positively impact front-line and marginalised communities, toward advancing the agency, confidence and impact of underrepresented voices in policymaking spaces and those who are subject to technology impacts and harms.
The program is mainly geared to support nonprofit actors such as Civil Society, academics, and Individual activists.
If you are looking for support with policy advising, recruitment, or policy leadership support, and work in a company or for-profit organization, contact us.
We are developing a range of offerings which will provide an opportunity for emerging leaders to meet, learn, and build connections with each other as they deepen their policy knowledge and enhance their policy practices. Key learning outcomes include:
We are grateful to be working with a diverse and inspiring group of advisors to envision both a program and a sector that supports and elevates new and essential voices and perspectives into digital policy discussions and outcomes. The advisory role consists of a combination of ad-hoc conversations, providing feedback on program plans, synchronous meetings, and serving as amplifiers and ambassadors where appropriate.
[The Summit] was a truly fantastic event, I enjoyed the rich discussions. I was amazed by all the energy, skills and openness from everyone present. It was a very empowering experience for me, I felt safe sharing my thoughts.
Raegan is Director of Policy Leadership at Aspiration, where she is incubating a program to collaboratively elevate and support emerging leaders from under-represented communities and backgrounds into the European (digital) policy space.
Raegan is Director of Policy Leadership at Aspiration, where she is incubating a program with the intention to elevate, partner with, and support emerging leaders from under-represented communities and backgrounds into the European (digital) policy space.
Raegan is a seasoned digital policy practitioner and strategist, with over a decade of experience as a policy advocate, campaigner, manager, director, strategic advisor, and mentor. Over these years, Raegan has been deeply engaged in the European policy space, on issues from data protection and online tracking, to platform responsibility, disinformation, net neutrality, copyright reform, and competition.
As Director of Public Policy at Mozilla, Raegan led a globally distributed team to change laws, practices, and policies of governments and companies to align with principles of an open, secure, and safe internet. She meaningfully and strategically engaged with partners in the technology industry, funding community, civil society, and the open source software movement through coalition building, deep partnerships, and cooperation.
Raegan currently advises on a range of projects and organisations to advance human rights and social justice, including the Decolonising the Digital Rights Field Project, the TU Delft AI Lab on the future of work, and the World Ethical Data Foundation, and is currently serving her second term on the Board of European Digital Rights (EDRi).
Raegan has also served as:
Raegan did her Master’s in Global Studies at the Universities of Vienna and Leipzig. She lives in Brussels, and in her free time you can find her gardening, spending time with her daughter, or riding her electric bike.
Asja is a researcher and advocate specialising in the intersection of technology and social justice. Currently, she is pursuing a PhD in sociology, and is a core participant of the Decolonising Digital Rights process led by EDRi and DFF. Previously, Asja worked at SHARE Foundation, and also served on the Government of Serbia’s working group that developed ethical guidelines for the implementation of AI.
Allen Gunn works to help NGOs, activists, foundations and technologists make more effective use of technology for social, racial and climate justice.
Allen Gunn is Executive Director of Aspiration (www.aspirationtech.org) in San Francisco, USA, and works to help NGOs, activists, foundations and technologists make more effective and sustainable digital strategies in support of social, racial and climate justice.
Gunner has worked in numerous technology environments from NGO to Silicon Valley start-up to college faculty to large corporation, serving in senior management, engineering, teaching and volunteer roles. He is an experienced strategist, mentor and facilitator with a passion for designing collaborative open learning processes, and he believes in melding hard work with serious fun.
In his role at Aspiration, he connects nonprofit organizations, free and open source projects, philanthropic funders and activists with strategic frameworks, technology solutions, digital practices and data skills that help them more fully realize their missions.
The common thread that connects all facets of Gunner's work is a focus on open approaches to capacity building and knowledge sharing in social change efforts. Aspiration prioritizes work that supports and contributes to open communities of practice who create technology and content that benefit nonprofit and foundation efforts. The organization has designed and facilitated almost 700 extremely open learning and knowledge sharing events, in over 50 countries across the globe, predicated on a philosophy of active participation that puts each participant “in control of their own destiny”, in contrast to approaches that place audiences in passive listening roles. Aspiration publishes all licensed work products, including software tools, books, papers and training materials, under open licenses; for published documents and media, the Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike, and for software the GNU General Public License whenever possible.
Gunner is an active facilitator, contributor, advisor, and/or partner in a number of organizations and projects, including Digital Freedom Fund, European Digital Rights (EDRi), SustainOSS, FOSS Responders, Gathering for Open Science Hardware, OpenReferral, OpenStreetMap US, OpenStreetMap Foundation, Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team, Electronic Frontier Foundation, The Tor Project, Tails, Greenpeace USA, Rainforest Action Network, Simply Secure, and Mozilla.
He is a board member of Global Exchange, Peer 2 Peer University, and Forward Change, and serves on the Project Leadership Committee for the Reproducible Builds Project, and also serves in formal advisory roles with The Everett Program, The Center for Tech Cultivation, SAFETAG, Electronic Frontier Foundation Security Education Companion, CorpWatch, LocalizED, and United for Iran. He is a former board member of The Committee on Sustainability Assessment (COSA), The Ruckus Society, Idealware and US Treks/Internet Treks.
Gunner is also a guest lecturer and former faculty member in Computer Science at Foothill College in California, and served on the Computer Science faculty at Bryn Mawr College in Philadelphia early in his career. Prior to his role at Aspiration, he served as Chief Tech Organizer for The Ruckus Society, and prior to that he was co-founder and Chief Technology Officer at Pensare, an eLearning dotgone. He has served as senior software engineer at firms including Novell, NetManage, and a number of startups, and has shepherded large software projects through all stages of development, from inception, design, engineering, and testing to deployment, support and marketing, in environments ranging from start-up to large corporation to nonprofit.
Our programs and events are free of charge. Furthermore, we are conscious that interested participants may come from under-resourced or volunteer organisations, and/or those who may be doing policy on an independent basis. We are happy to discuss how we may support your participation whether through honouraria or other resources and support. We are mindful of the privilege often afforded to those who work in public policy.
