Council Election 2024/Candidates

Chelsea Horne

• I am a Senior Professorial Lecturer at American University, where I am also a faculty fellow at the Internet Governance Lab. I hold a Ph.D. in Communication with a focus area on media, technology, and culture. My areas of research encompass communication, privacy, internet governance, AI policy, digital culture, and information integrity.
• Currently, I am serving as Co-Convenor (Vice-President) of the ISOC-DC interim Council. During my short tenure and in collaboration with Joly MacFie, I have organized the two most recent ISOC-DC events: 1) a panel featuring internationally recognized experts, and 2) ISOC-DC’s Annual General Meeting. I have also represented the DC Council at ISOC events.
• I’m standing for re-election as I am greatly involved with the reboot of ISOC-DC and I believe my continuity on the Council will help rebuild the institutional knowledge and history to bring back ISOC-DC to full force.
• With its prime location in the nation’s capital, ISOC-DC has the opportunity to be at the forefront of internet policy conversations. As I did with the first edition of the Cyber Lecture Series “Innovation for Good: A Conversation on the Internet’s Future,” I would continue to work with ISOC-DC on fostering and hosting events that address the critical and urgent internet policy questions of the moment, engaging both the local and global internet communities. I also look forward to work with the new Council to forward the mission of ISOC.
• https://www.american.edu/cas/faculty/horne.cfm
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/chelseahorne/

Michael Nelson

• I have been involved with the global Internet Society for more than 25 years and have attended, chaired, and helped organize dozens of ISOC-DC events over the last 15 years. I have served on the ISOC-DC Council and chaired it more than 10 years ago.
• I would bring my broad knowledge of Internet technology and digital policy to this role. Furthermore, I would provide institutional memory and a hundreds of contacts, which I could use to recruit volunteers, speakers, and sponsors.
• In the past, ISOC-DC provided invaluable briefings to key players in the DC area who are making and shaping Internet policy and corporate strategies. Today, with Zoom, Skype, Teams, and other collaboration tools, in-person panels are less critical. Organizations concerned about the future of the Internet can tap into the best expertise across the country and around the world.
• In the future ISOC-DC will continue to do events like the IGF-USA but it's also important to ask what else we can do. My priorities:

1. Using the global Internet Society staff and our network of chapters--and their networks of friends and supporters--to help the Internet community in the DC area (and beyond) connect to people outside the U.S. who can share lessons about what's happening there.
2. Reviving the Brainstorming Breakfast and ISOC-DC Happy Hours that provided opportunities for a wide range of ISOC-DC chapter members to share their ideas and concerns with each other. These events created many new friendships and strengthened old ones.

• https://carnegieendowment.org/experts/1779
• Twitter: @MikeNelson. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelnelson5/

Steven Williams

• I have been a member of ISOC since 1998 with four chapters. Onterio and Los Angeles California. Dulles, Virginia (Loudoun County) and Washington D.C. As the Senior Engineer for a large IT Consulting firm in DMV for 20 years, I have supported numerous non-profits with their operations and mission, every Governor in America from 2002-2010 through the Hall States building. I spent four years with the Congressional Internet Caucus Advisory Committee as a technical advisor for Polycom to the committee. This afforded me the opportunity to work with members of Congress and led to me bringing in the first high-speed internet access to the Hart Senate building in 2001
• I have spent the last 5 years leading the effort to bridging the digital divide across America from a project in Baltimore with ISOC-DC to National Juneteenth Observance Foundation's efforts in Los Angeles, CA., Houston, TX., and Las Vegas, NV. (Soul City WiFi)with local non-profits.
• As President of the National Juneteenth Observance Foundation (NJOF) I was the primary advocator for America's 12th National Holiday and I did incorporate ISOC -DC and the .US TLD in the drive to gather 1.5 million petition signatures for Juneteenth to be delivered to Congress
• I believe that ISOC-DC can be a powerful voice and advocator for Broadband progress and Internet Technology that will not only affect Washington D.C. but all of America.
• https://www.urfixed.com
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/urfixed/

Mike Godwins

• I’ve been working in internet law and policy since the beginning of my career as a lawyer. I was the first employee at the Electronic Frontier Foundation as a staff counsel, and later served as a staff attorney for the Center for Democracy and Technology. At CDT, then later as Senior Technology Counsel and as legal director of Public Knowledge, I developed testimony, met with regulators and staff, and supervised strategic litigation related to copyright and technological protection measures. I leveraged my experience as a supervisory technology counsel in my role as general counsel at the Wikimedia Foundation (which operates Wikipedia). In my roles at Public Knowledge, at the Wikimedia Foundation, and at Internews, I also provided legal research, insight, and support regarding human-resources, employment, and labor law. I’m a frequently published author on technology-law matters, with a full range of articles written both for legal accuracy and for accessibility for non-law-trained audiences. More recently I have expanded my work into Trust & Safety best practices and support, and I have founded the government-relations function at a Privacy-Enhancing-Technology (PET) startup, Anonym Inc. The common theme of all my professional work has been a focus on advancing empowerment and protections both for all individuals and for non-profit organizations and for-profit companies whose mission goals include advancement of ISOC's vision of an open internet.
• I believe ISOC-DC is uniquely positioned to be a facilitator for high-quality expertise and advice to policymakers in Washington, DC. In this role, ISOC-DC can supplement and support Internet Society's work in promoting an open, strong, accessible, reliable, and secure internet. I also believe that ISOC-DC can contribute independently these goals by seeking DC-area targets of opportunity and building relationships with policymakers, particularly at the federal level.
• Finally, I want to make sure that in the coming year ISOC-DC maximizes its success in rebooting and re-engagement as we recover from the loss of key leadership and from the general impact of the pandemic in disrupting our continuity and outreach efforts.
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Godwin
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelgodwin1/