UKIGF 2024 Speakers

Baroness Jones of Whitchurch was appointed Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department for Science, Innovation and technology and the Department for Business and Trade, and Baroness in Waiting (Government Whip) on 9 July 2024.

Baroness Jones joined the House of Lords in 2006. She has previously served as Shadow Spokesperson for:

– Science, Innovation and Technology from 2023 – 2024
– Environment, Food and Rural Affairs from 2015 – 2022
– Education from 2011 to 2015
– Culture, Media and Sport from 2010 – 2014

She was previously a trade union official, including as Director of Policy and Public Affairs for UNISON from 1994 to 2006.
Baroness Jones was previously Chair of Rothamsted Enterprises at Rothamsted research institute, a Board member at Ombudsman Services, a member of the General Medical Council Fitness to Practice panel, and Vice Chair of Circle Housing Group.

Helen Milner OBE is the Group Chief Executive of Good Things Foundation, an international digital inclusion charity working in partnership locally and nationally to fix the digital divide. Good Things Foundation Group operates in the UK and Australia.
 
Helen has over 30 years’ experience of working in, creating, and leading internet-based organisations delivering systems change at scale. She works closely with people deep in communities as well at global and national levels. She has worked in public, private, charity, and academic sectors.
 
Helen was awarded an OBE for services to digital inclusion in June 2015. In 2017 she won Digital Leader of the Year (UK), Computer Weekly named Helen as the 14th most influential person in UK IT in 2020. In 2021, she was named ISPA’s Internet Hero of the year. And in 2024, she received an honorary Doctor of Letters from the University of Sheffield. She is the Chair of environmental charity Subak, and is on the Money and Pension Services’ Board Advisory Group.

Dr Ellen Helsper is Professor of Socio-Digital Inequalities in the Media and Communications Department at the London School of Economics and Political Science. 

She is Departmental PhD Programme Director, Co-Lead on the Politics of Inequalities programme at the International Inequalities Institute, on the Digital Futures for Children centre management board, and global coordinator of the From Digital Skills to Tangible Outcomes projects.

She holds Visiting Scholar positions at research institutes around the world and consults widely for governments, the third and commercial sectors. She has a PhD in Media and Communications (LSE) and an MSc in Media Psychology (Utrecht University).  

Lord Clement-Jones was made CBE for political services in 1988 and a life peer in 1998. 

He is the Liberal Democrat House of Lords spokesperson for Science, Innovation and Technology; former Chair of the House of Lords Select Committee on AI; former member of AI in Weapons Systems Select Committee; member of Industry and Regulators Committee; Co-founder and Co-Chair of APPG on AI; founding member of OECD’s Parliamentary Group on AI; Consultant on AI Policy and Regulation to global law firm, DLA Piper; Chair of Trust Alliance Group (formerly Ombudsman Services); Chair of Council of Queen Mary University London.

Lizzie Coles-Kemp is professor of information security at Royal Holloway University of London and specialises in the design of accessible and inclusive security technologies, practices, and processes. In her role as Principal Fellow at the UK’s Research Institute of Sociotechnical Cyber Security, Lizzie works on the topic of digital responsibility. She has a long track record of working in partnership with the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre and with UK government departments for science, innovation, and technology (DSIT) and for culture, media and sport (DCMS).

Christopher Mondini is Managing Director for Europe at ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. 

ICANN coordinates the addressing systems, such as the Domain Name System, that allow the Internet to expand rapidly as a globally unified network. Mr Mondini leads ICANN’s outreach efforts to stakeholders across Europe and the business sector worldwide.

From the halls of Washington to the start-ups of Silicon Valley, Chris has dedicated his career to bridging communications gaps that occur among diverse sectors — public, private and non-profit – and across international borders. He began his career as a United States diplomat and later became a corporate investigator with Deloitte.

He speaks and writes frequently on topics such as Internet governance, technology policy and the digital divide and holds degrees from Georgetown and Johns Hopkins Universities.

Areeq’s team focuses on how artificial intelligence and other data-driven technologies can, and should, be used to benefit humanity.

Areeq is also an elected Councillor for Canning Town, in East London, and founded the influential technology policy think tank, WebRoots Democracy, which ran between 2014 and 2020.

He has authored various reports on digital democracy, social media, and artificial intelligence. Most notably, he led a high-profile project on disinformation during the 2019 UK General Election, producing viral deepfakes of Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn endorsing each other for Prime Minister.

Areeq holds a BSc in Economics and Political Science from the University of Birmingham. His career history includes working at: the Foreign Office; the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport; the UK Parliament; London City Hall; and KPMG.

Izaan is the Data Protection and Information Security Officer for NOW: Pensions, and a Board Member of the Internet Society’s Youth Standing Group (ISOC YSG). He graduated with first class honours in law from the London School of Economics, and was called to the Bar of England & Wales in 2022. He is a former ISOC Youth Ambassador to the United Nations Internet Governance Forum (UN IGF), and former YOUthDIG Fellow for the European Dialogue on Internet Governance. 
He has been involved in various UN activities, including as a key member of the drafting team for the Policy Network on Internet Fragmentation’s final report which was presented at the UN IGF in Kyoto, as a coordinator and editor of the ISOC YSG’s Position Paper on the Global Digital Compact which was submitted to the UN Office of the Secretary-General’s Envoy on Technology, and as a contributor to the People-Centered Internet’s Data Cooperatives Report which was launched during the UN Science Summit’s Digital Governance Series this year. He is also deeply passionate about digital rights and bringing youth voices to internet governance processes.

Lea Kaspar is the Executive Director of Global Partners Digital (GPD), a UK-based social purpose organisation at the intersection of digital technology, democracy, and human rights. With over a decade of experience in digital policy, Lea is a leading advocate for human rights and inclusive, multistakeholder approaches to digital governance. Under her leadership, GPD has been at the forefront of efforts to advance multistakeholder dialogue and elevate civil society voices in international forums, including the United Nations General Assembly, the International Telecommunication Union, and the WSIS+10 Review Process.
 
Since 2014, GPD has also served as the secretariat of the Freedom Online Coalition (FOC), a partnership of 41 governments seeking to promote human rights online. Lea has held prominent roles in internet governance bodies and initiatives, including serving on the UK Multistakeholder Group on Internet Governance, co-chairing the Advisory Board of the Global Forum on Cyber Expertise (2016-18), and participating as a member of the UN CSTD Working Group on Enhanced Cooperation (2016-18) and the IGF Multistakeholder Advisory Group (2015-18). She is a member of the European Council on Foreign Relations.

Katherine Yesilirmak is the Deputy Director of Strategy in the Responsible Tech Adoption Unit.

Since joining government, Katherine has worked in a number of strategy roles including Bill Management and Private Office. She joined DSIT to lead on cross-departmental digital regulation strategy. She was then asked to set up The Foundation Model Taskforce, the precursor to the AI safety institute (AISI).

In her most recent role, she led international efforts to develop standards and protocols on behalf of AISI. Katherine is passionate about the potential of technology adoption and the need for safe and trustworthy AI.

Anna Lindsay is the Partnerships Lead at VoiceBox. She works with VoiceBox’s community of international Ambassadors spread over 40 countries to ensure that youth voices are included and heard in VoiceBox’s mission. She also leads the writing and editing of VoiceBox’s youth insight articles and research papers. She is passionate about youth issues and online trends – working hard to ensure VoiceBox is among the first to report on what’s emerging in the youth space.

Jakob is the Director of Science & Technology Policy at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change (TBI) and an International Fellow at Yale University’s Digital Ethics Center (DEC). Jakob has published extensively in the fields of tech policy, AI governance, and AI auditing. His work has been featured in journals like Nature Machine Intelligence, Science and Engineering Ethics, and Minds and Machines. 

Jakob holds a PhD from the Oxford Internet Institute (OII). Prior to joining TBI, he was a visiting scholar at Princeton University’s Center for Information Technology Policy (CITP), and a research fellow at the Centre for the Governance of AI (GovAI). Outside academia, Jakob has worked as a Specialist Consultant working within McKinsey & Company’s Risk and Resilience practice, as well as a Trade and Investment Advisor at the Embassy of Sweden in New Delhi, India.  

Tommy Shaffer Shane is a Policy Manager at the Centre for Long Term Resilience, where he advises the UK government on the regulation of AI. Previously he worked at the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, where he led the build of a £10m AI-driven analytics platform focused on national security. Prior to that, he was Head of Policy at First Draft, a counter-disinformation non-profit, where he collaborated with the WHO, Stanford University, Unicef, the UN, Google and Partnership on AI on various projects. He is currently completing a PhD at King’s College London on AI incidents and how they can inform the future of AI.  

James Ball is an award winning journalist, broadcaster and author, fellow of the think-tank Demos, and the political editor of The New European.

He has worked as the global editor of TBIJ, a special correspondent at BuzzFeed UK and special projects editor at The Guardian, where he played a key role in the Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of the NSA leaks by Edward Snowden, as well as the offshore leaks, HSBC Files, Reading the Riots and Keep it in the Ground projects.  At WikiLeaks he was closely involved in Cablegate – the publication of 250,000 classified US embassy cables in 2010 – as well as working on two documentaries based on the Iraq War Logs.

James is a longstanding trustee for, and chair of the UK committee of, the Ethical Journalism Network. James is the author of multiple books, including “Post-Truth and “The Tangled Web We Weave: Inside The Shadow System That Shapes the Internet”. His most recent book, “The Other Pandemic: How Qanon Contaminated The World” was published by Bloomsbury in July 2023.

Henry leads public policy and external affairs for Logically, a UK tech scale-up that combines advanced AI with one of the world’s largest commercial fact-checking and Open Source Intelligence teams. The company works with governments, businesses, and social media platforms to deliver information advantage in increasingly complex digital landscapes.

Prior to Logically, Henry managed public affairs functions at BT & Twilio, was UK Public Affairs Lead for The General Medical Council, managed Public Policy & Regulatory Affairs for The GSMA across Asia-Pacific and was Gatwick Airport’s first public affairs manager following its sale by BAA.

Prior to joining Full Fact in October 2023, Chris was the BBC’s first dedicated fact checker on air and online, pioneering fact checking on mainstream outlets through his development and leadership of BBC Reality Check. His work covered two general elections, post-Brexit politics, the US Presidential election, the pandemic, and the climate crisis.

Before launching Reality Check, Chris spent more than two decades as a senior correspondent, winning awards and interacting with government and business leaders around the world on a daily basis.

Hannah is Head of Research (Digital Policy) at Demos – the cross-party think tank focused on putting people at the heart of policymaking and ensuring technological progress aligns with the needs and values of citizens. Earlier this year, she launched ‘Driving Disinformation’ a study highlighting how democratic deficits and weaknesses in our local information ecosystems gave rise to mis/disinformation. She also contributed opportunities to build resilience to mis/disinformation through our education system in Demos’ recent Trustwatch report. Demos has written on how to mitigate the risks of generative AI and mis/disinformation on elections here and, together with Full Fact, called for UK political parties to form a cross-party agreement on their responsible use of generative AI, here. Hannah’s currently writing a paper on ‘the state of digital rights’ launching in December 2024.
 
Prior to Demos, she led research teams informing programmes to tackle harmful attitudes and behaviours in the UK, East Africa and Asia Pacific. She is a qualified secondary school English teacher (PGCE), has a SOAS MA in Migration & Diaspora Studies, is currently completing an MSc part-time in the Social Science of the Internet with the OII, and formerly Vice-Chair of Amnesty International UK. 

David Souter is an independent expert on the digital society and its impacts on economy, society, environment and governance. 

He has led many studies for UN agencies and development agencies over the past twenty years, including UNCTAD, UNESCO, ITU, DESA, the World Bank, African Development Bank and European Commission. 

He led the ten-year review of WSIS for the UN Commission on Science and Technology for Development and is lead consultant for the twenty-year review which it will publish in 2025. 

His blog Inside the Digital Society is published by the Association for Progressive Communications.

Georgia is a Senior Research Analyst at Oxford Information Labs and the DNS Research Federation. She has 5+ years of experience previously working within counterterrorism and law enforcement, intelligence analysis, investigations, and policy analysis. Georgia produces research on emerging technologies such as Blockchain, AI and Quantum as well as digital policy and regulations. Her recent focuses include the NIS2 regulations in Europe and KYC for the domain name industry.

Laura is Access Now’s Senior UN Advocacy Officer, where she advances international law and norms on digital rights at international organizations, particularly the United Nations.

Her work focuses on a range of issues including: internet shutdowns, connectivity, cyber and digital security, privacy and surveillance, shrinking civic space, sustainability, and freedom of peaceful assembly and association in the digital age — where she co-authored Access Now’s first report on the topic. Laura also represents Access Now on the Freedom Online Coalition (FOC) Advisory Network and the FOC’s Task Force on Internet Shutdowns, which Access Now serves as co-chair with the United Kingdom and the Global Network Initiative.

Esfandiari is the president and co-founder at the Global TechnoPolitics Forum – a research organization driving global conversations at the intersection of technology and geopolitics. She is a member of the AtLarge Advisory Committee (ALAC) at the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) representing the European Region (EURALO). She serves at the APCO Worldwide’s International Advisory Council and was a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s GeoTech Center.

She is also the founder and CEO at Pario Consultants, an international technology investment and incubating company. Esfandiari offers a unique blend of expertise across technology, geopolitics, and policy, bridging academic research with practical experience in both the public and private sectors. Her extensive international background includes leadership, advisory, and investment positions with organizations and corporations in China, Europe, the Middle East, and the United States.

She is a recognized public speaker and commentator on geopolitics and governance of technology, with a focus on leveraging AI to advance sustainable development goals.

Yih-Choung Teh is Group Director, Strategy and Research at Ofcom. The Strategy and Research Group’s role is to ensure that Ofcom has a deep understanding of consumers’ use of communications services through research and analysis of industry trends, and to develop insight which informs Ofcom’s overarching strategy.

He has previously led Ofcom’s Technology Group, been a Director in Ofcom’s Competition Group, working on Ofcom’s strategy to encourage investment in telecoms infrastructure, and overseeing Ofcom’s broadcasting and media competition programme. Before joining Ofcom, Yih-Choung worked for a strategy consultancy in the telecoms sector, providing policy and strategy advice to public and private sector clients globally. Prior to that he held an academic research post in the University of Oxford.