RHIZOMATICA - Key Persons

Job Titles:

• Latin America Policy & Regulatory Advocacy Coordinator ( LocNet )

Adriana Labardini Inzunza obtained her law degree cum laude from Escuela Libre de Derecho in Mexico City in 1987 and her master's degree (LLM) from Columbia University in New York, on a Fulbright scholar in 1991. For four and a half years she served as Commissioner at the Federal Institute of Telecommunications (IFT), the Mexican independent regulatory body and competition authority for telecommunications and broadcasting industries. She also chaired IFT for an interim term in the fall of 2017. Her tenure ended on February 28th, 2018. In such capacity she successfully led efforts to create a research center within IFT, strengthen regional and international relations among regulators, such as FCC, CRTC, and through Regulatel, BEREC and IIC; she has fought for pluralism in media, truly independent public media as well as initiatives for inclusion & accessibility and innovating the regulator. During the first two years of her tenure, she was the Commissioner in charge of transparency and access to public information at IFT and a member of the Ethics Committee. Currently an independent public interest lawyer and consumer rights expert, is collaborating with Rhizomatica promoting and advocating for sustainable, self-managed community networks to bridge the digital divide, promote rural and indigenous connectivity and media. She is also a founder of Conectadas a network of women in the ICT industries working for gender equality in Mexico. She served as Secretary of the Board of COFETEL, the former, telecommunications agency (1999-2003); practiced law in a major law firm, specializing in the areas of corporate, administrative and telecommunications law (1986- 1998). Upon her return to Mexico after completing the H. Humphrey Fellowship in North Carolina, UNC and Duke (2003-2004), she co-founded Alconsumidor, a nonprofit watchdog, pioneer in advocating for consumer rights and consumer class actions, a project that ended in a constitutional and legal reform. She is a Fulbright scholar and a Hubert Humphrey and Ashoka Fellow and has lectured at CIDE, UNAM, ITAM, ITESM, UP as visiting professor. She is a member of the Law School Advisory Board at Universidad Iberoamericana.

Job Titles:

• Co - Coordinator Innovation, Technology and Sustainability

Job Titles:

• Staff Member

Job Titles:

• Expert of the International Telecommunication Union
• Policy and Advocacy Coordinator

Erick holds a law degree from the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico, with postgraduate courses at the Free School of Law; a Master's in Social Administration with a concentration in Community Development from the University of Queensland, Australia and PhD in Rural Development from the Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana in Mexico. Erick is an Expert of the International Telecommunication Union for connectivity issues related to remote areas and indigenous peoples and he has served as Co-Rapporteur on Development of Information Technology and Communication in remote areas and groups with unattended needs, and Head of the Study Group on Indigenous Populations, the Permanent Consultative Committee 1 of the Inter-American Telecommunication Commission of the OAS, as well as advisor to the Directorate General of Telecommunications Policy on development issues in preparation of the World Telecommunication Development Conference and the Plenipotentiary Conference of the ITU. Mr. Huerta is currently a member of the advisory council of IFETEL, the Mexican telecommunications regulator.

Job Titles:

• Board of Directors

Karla was a Senior Legal Advisor for the Mexican Federal Institute of Telecommunications, and the head of the Transparency and Data Protection Office of the Center for Research and Teaching in Economics. She has a well-established record of working with rural and indigenous communities in Mexico in connectivity and digital rights. Currently, Karla is the Policy Advocacy Chief at Redes A.C., and Researcher from the Mexican Center for Technology and Community Knowledge (CITSAC) and acts as a Technology, Policy and Digital Rights Researcher for Rhizomatica. She holds a JD (LL.B) from CIDE, and a Master's in Law, Science and Technology, from Stanford University.

Job Titles:

• Technology Coordinator

Keith Whyte is a musician and intensive computer and network analyst who has been working with the communications needs of social organizations since 1991 when he ran a dial-up BBS and FidoNet node. In 2011, after informal discussions about community cellular possibilities with Peter Bloom, he set up initial trial GSM installations at the Contemporary Art Archipelago in Turku, Finland and The Global Contemporary at ZKM Karlsruhe, Germany. Keith has worked as part of the Rhizomatica team since the inception of the community GSM project.

Job Titles:

• Co - Coordinator Innovation, Technology and Sustainability

Since 2016, Nils has been collaborating with Rhizomatica and leads work on the "Connecting the Unconnected: Supporting community networks and other community-based connectivity initiatives" (LocNet), a joint initiative with APC to support Community Networks. Nils studied Political Science, Communications and American Literature at FU Berlin, Germany. Since 2005 he has worked as a media trainer and freelance broadcasting journalist in Mexico, Chile and Brazil. In Mexico, in 2009, Nils participated in the creation of flujos-vivos, the first Linux/GNU software compilation applied to the needs of Latin American community media. This work was follow by a five year involvement in the Brazilian chapter of the World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters (AMARC), working on media regulation, digital broadcasting and media training with indigenous and Afro-descendant communicators from the Amazon region. In addition to his work with Rhizomatica, he currently coordinates the development of an open-source platform for DW Akademie that aims to strengthen the digital production, exchange and content sharing of community media in the Global South.

Job Titles:

• Founder and General Coordinator

Peter holds a BA in Urban Studies from the University of Pennsylvania and a Master's degree in Rural Development from the Autonomous Metropolitan University in Xochimilco, Mexico. Mr. Bloom is the founder in 2002 and ex-director of Juntos, the first organization in Philadelphia dedicated to organizing and defending the human rights of latino immigrants. In 2009 Peter began working in Nigeria as a development consultant and media maker and lived in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria for two years co-founding the Media for Justice Project based outside of Port Harcourt. Since 2009 Peter has been coordinating Rhizomatica, an organization he started to promote new communication technologies and that helped start the first community owned and managed cell phone network in the Americas in 2013. Peter is both an Ashoka and Shuttleworth Foundation fellow since 2014. For his work on telecommunications and community development, in 2015 he was named an MIT Technology Review Innovator under 35 and to Foreign Policy's 100 Leading Global Thinkers list.

Job Titles:

• HERMES Lead Developer and Project Manager

Rafael Diniz holds a PhD in Computer Science. He has experience in the areas of digital TV and radio broadcasting, HF radio technologies, hypermedia and multimedia systems, computer graphics and electromagnetic spectrum management. Dr. Diniz has been supporting the free/community radio and TV movements in South America for years. In the 2000's Rafael participated heavily in the Brazilian Indymedia network and free software movement. In the 2010's Rafael worked on the development and installation of the first community DTV ISDB-T channel in the world, broadcasting from Buenos Aires on channel 20, and in the deployment of digital HF networks in the Amazon region of Brazil.

Job Titles:

• Researcher
• Trusted Advisor & Board of Directors

Steve Song is a researcher, entrepreneur, and advocate for cheaper, more pervasive access to communication infrastructure in Africa. He is a 2018 Fellow for Digital Inclusion at the Mozilla Foundation. He is also a research associate with the Network Startup Resource Center (NSRC) where he works to expand the use of wireless technologies through shared spectrum strategies. His strong technical knowledge combined with an exceptional ability to communicate technical concepts to non-expert audiences have made his blog (http://manypossibilities.net) a popular destination for anyone interested in African telecommunications and Internet issues. Since 2009, Steve has been actively maintaining public maps of undersea and terrestrial fibre optic infrastructure in Africa. Steve is also the founder of Village Telco, a social enterprise that manufactures low-cost WiFi mesh VoIP technologies to deliver affordable voice and Internet service in under-serviced areas. Previously, Steve worked at the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), where he led the organization's ICT4D program in Africa, funding research into the transformational potential of ICTs