About the Network

The Global Network of Social Justice and Digital Resilience consists of ten established organizations primarily from the Global South working to enhance the digital resilience of social justice ecosystem in their local and regional contexts.

This Network aims to become a source of knowledge and critical thinking that builds and learns collective ways of strengthening the tech capacity of each of its members and, in consequence, the digital resilience and social justice ecosystem. It is a global south-centered space that generates collective knowledge on strengthening digital resilience based on contextual needs and approaches, cross-regional learnings and forecasting. It will harness the critical mass of experts and experience of the Global South, and build on external existing expertise.

Member organizations are based in India, Lebanon, Kenya, Nigeria, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Costa Rica, and Canada, and bring accumulated experiences on digital resilience from Latin America, Southern and Eastern Africa, Asia and the Middle East. The members of the Network are:

Network Values

The primary source of learning and value is the accumulation of the Network members experience as organizations of the global majority. Therefore, the work of the Network aims to diversify knowledge and build critical thinking rooted in their own expertise and contexts, while upholding and putting in practice the following social justice values:

  • Equity, diversity, and inclusion;
  • Feminist principles and perspectives;
  • Anti-racist and anti-colonial principles and actions;
  • Accessibility and anti-ableism.

Vision

The Network is the go-to Network and thought leader for digital resilience related issues and approaches for the social justice field.

Mission

To strengthen digital resilience capacities and accelerate learning among social justice organizations and communities in the global majority.

Network Objectives

  1. Increase domestic and regional tech capacity among social justice organizations in the global majority.
  2. Diversify the field of technologists, to include more leaders who are women, non-binary and gender-nonconforming, and are people of color and from communities of color.
  3. Foster global peer learning among organizations working to strengthen digital infrastructure and resilience.
  4. Increase and diversify funding to support strengthening digital resilience of social justice organizations.

Advisory Board

Alberto Cerda

Advisory Board Chair

Alberto Cerda Silva is a tenured professor in law and technology at the Center of Law, Technology, and Society of the University of Chile. Between 2014-2023, he served as a global program officer on the Ford Foundation’s Technology and Society team, where his work focused on supporting organizations advancing digital resilience and policies from a human rights and social justice perspective, especially among Global South countries. Before that, in addition to advising governmental agencies and international bodies, he was a founding member and international affairs director of ONG Derechos Digitales, a Chilean civil society organization defending human rights in digital environments across Latin America. Alberto holds a Ph.D. in law and holds an LL.M. degree in international legal studies, both from Georgetown University.

Andrew Puddephatt

A policy expert consultant who focuses on the contemporary challenges to human rights and democracy and the intersection of internet policy and human rights. A long-term consultant to the Ford Foundation and UNESCO, his most recent projects include leading the development of guidelines to internet governance for UNESCO and analysis of current challenges facing democracy and human rights for the Ford Foundation. He chaired the Internet Watch Foundation, a charity registered in the UK that works with the internet industry to remove child sex abuse images online and also chaired International Media Support, a Danish based NGO that promotes independent media in conflict zones. He is the Deputy Chair of the philanthropic foundation the Sigrid Rausing Trust. He began professional life as a coder, writing programmes in COBOL, BASIC and RPG. In 2003 he was awarded an OBE for services to human rights.

Graciela Selaimen

Regional lead for Latin America,The International Resource for Impact and Storytelling (IRIS)

Graciela is a journalist based in Brazil. She is currently the regional lead for Latin America of IRIS – the International Resource for Impact and Storytelling. IRIS is a donor collaborative for philanthropy focused on strengthening civil society through narrative strategies and creative storytelling for impact. Before joining IRIS she was a Senior Program Officer with the Ford Foundation, developing strategies and programs in the areas of Technology and Society, Creativity and Freedom of Expression, Civic Engagement and Governance. Her work has contributed to consolidating the field of digital rights in Brazil and to bolster the independent investigative journalism ecosystem. Prior to joining Ford in 2013, she was a co-founder and director of the Nupef Institute, and the editor in chief of the poliTICs magazine, the first publication dedicated to digital policy and rights in Brazil.

Lori McGlinchey

Director, Technology and Society Program, Ford Foundation

Lori McGlinchey is the director of the Ford Foundation’s Technology and Society program, which supports civil society organizations in the U.S. and internationally working to ensure that the internet and digital technologies are designed and governed equitably to advance social and economic justice, particularly for those experiencing persistent discrimination. She previously served as senior program officer, where she led grantmaking focused on expanding broadband equity, and constraining surveillance, extractive data practices, and discriminatory predictive technologies. She also developed funding strategies to advance free expression and address information disorder. Before joining Ford in 2014, Lori was senior program officer for the U.S. Democracy Fund of the Open Society Foundations, focused on media and internet policy, government accountability, journalism, and documentary film. At OSF she developed a special initiative to address the politicization of science-based US policy making and its impact on free expression, reproductive justice, and climate policy.

Miguel Pulido

Partner, Creatura

Lawyer (Tec de Monterrey). He has a post-graduate degree in Human Rights (University of Chile), a Master’s degree in Human Rights and Democracy (Latin American Social Sciences Institute, Flacso). He was selected as a Yale World Fellow in 2014. Miguel has experience in civil society organizations and as consultant. Currently he is partner at Creatura where he works as well as Executive Director.

Roselyn Odoyo

Senior Program Officer, Mozilla Foundation

Roselyn is a human rights advocate, a feminist, and have been working in service to these movements through strategy development, philanthropic advocacy, research and convening within civil society for the past fifteen years. More recently, she has been working at the intersection of digital technology and society as a senior programme officer at Mozilla foundation. Roselyn is motivated by justice and equity and continue to pursue these values through her engagement in the tech sector with a focus on addressing intersecting inequities in the digital and technology landscape.

Samar Verma

Development Professional, Mentor & Coach

Of the 26 years of professional experience, Samar has spend over 15 years as grant manager in two international development agencies. As Program Officer at Ford Foundation until very recently, Samar led their program portfolios on public interest technologies, future of workers and wrote the India philanthropy strategy. For 12 years before joining Ford Foundation, as Senior Program Specialist at International Development Research Centre (IDRC) of Canada, he managed the global Think Tank Initiative program in South Asia & Myanmar which provided multi-year institutional support and technical capacity building to strengthen think tanks and networks. 

Samar started his career working in the corporate sector. In addition to working in international development and grant management based in India and UK, he has also conducted economic policy research, built and led institutions, and mentored and coached think tank and corporate leaders wanting to cross-over into development. He was the global head of Economic Justice Policy at Oxfam Great Britain leading their work on trade, agriculture and climate change. He founded a South Asia policy think tank. As Senior Fellow with the think tank ICRIER, he published widely. His books on public policy are published by Oxford University Press and Sage. Samar holds a PhD in Economics and an MBA.

Network’s Managing Partner:

Tecnologia Critica is the managing and network development partner of the Network. Critica’s main role is to support member organizations and the advisory board to co-design the Network’s strategy; support its operations and administration, in partnership with the New Venture Fund; and create opportunities for engagement, communications and collaborative learning. Critica is a consultancy firm established in 2021 and located in Santiago, Chile, with a distributed team based in London, Amman, Costa Rica and Santiago.

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