EXPERIENCE

Community Catalyst for the engine room

Sept 2014 – present, United States

  • Responsible for the development and implementation of the communications strategy, including website content, social media, and newsletters
  • Improving internal knowledge management systems, including the coordination of ongoing peer-to-peer trainings, managing the contact relationship management database
  • Building communities of practice around responsible data and the strategic use of technology in advocacy
  • Coordinated and co-facilitated the Responsible Data Forum on Human Rights Documentation in Manila, Philippines
  • Managed consultancy projects of 2-­‐3 people to strengthen the clients’ organizational security, information management and communications practices

Online Community Builder for New Tactics in Human Rights Project, The Center for Victims of Torture

Jan 2008 – Sept 2014, United States                 

  • Planned, coordinated, hosted and facilitated over 70 week-long online dialogues to facilitate peer-to-peer exchange of human rights work.
  • Recruited over 600 practitioners to lead these online dialogues and engaged an additional 600 in contributing to the discussion.
  • Supervised and coached researchers and online community builders located in the Middle East and North Africa region to recreate the success of the practices I established for our English content-creation process and community building efforts, as part of the development of a New Tactics regional HUB in MENA.
  • Responsible for communications, including the development and implementation of the Project’s social media plan.
  • Built the Project’s social media community of over 2800 followers on Twitter and Facebook.
  • Managed the development of a multilingual, community website (Arabic/English) that was on-time and under-budget.
  • Facilitated 5 interactive training workshops in Guatemala, India and the United States for human rights practitioners on how to strategically apply innovative tactics to human rights campaigns.
  • Built a constituent relationship system using CiviCRM.
  • Supervised approximately 100 interns in 5 years.

Advocacy and Communications Intern for African Centre for Treatment and Rehabilitation of Torture Victims (ACTV)         

Feb 2007 – Aug 2007, Uganda                 

  • Researched and began development of an information management system for client information.
  • Contributed in the planning and implementation of advocacy campaigns.
  • Engaged in a website redesign process.
  • Contributed to the development of the Uganda bill to prohibit/criminalize torture.

Other Work and Consultancies

  • Advisory Board Member for the engine room, Sept 2011 – Sept 2014
  • Outreach Consultancy for Tactical Technology Collective (TTC), Sept 2011 – Represented TTC at the Civicus World Assembly, participated in panel discussions, co-led digital security workshop
  • Site Building Consultancy for HURIDOCS, July – Aug 2010 – Built the WordPress website and migrated data for the Zimbabwe Human Rights Forum http://www.hrforumzim.com/

EDUCATION

M.A. Theory and Practice of Human Rights from University of Essex, Sept 2005, United Kingdom
Interdisciplinary degree with an emphasis on International Human Rights Law, International Humanitarian Law, and International Relations.

B.A. Humanities from University of Colorado – Boulder, Dec 2002, United States
Interdisciplinary degree with an emphasis on Philosophy and Art History, including significant amount of coursework in Computer Science.


SKILLS

  • CMS and Data Management: Drupal, WordPress, Martus, CiviCRM, MS Access and basic knowledge of HTML and CSS
  • Digital security: TrueCrypt, Pidgin + OTR, PGP, Enigmail, Rise-up, Tor, KeePass, VPN
  • Communications and outreach: MailChimp, listservs (Mailman, Electric Embers, Riseup), Twitter
  • Facilitation and moderation of small to medium size groups, both online and offline
  • French: basic writing and reading

Professional Trainings Attended

  • Knowledge Management, TechChange online course (2015)
  • Digital Security Trainers Summit at the Circumvention Tech Festival, Spain (2015)
  • Martus Training of Trainers, United States (2012)
  • Camp Wellstone Citizen Activism Training, United States (2011)
  • Training of Trainers on Digital Security for Human Rights Defenders, Turkey (2010)
  • Tactical Tech Information Activism Camp, India (2009)
  • Training of Trainers for Social Change, Training for Change, United States (2009)
  • Fletcher Summer Institute for the Advanced Study of Nonviolent Conflict, United States (2009)