A4AI Announces New Advisory Council Members

Alliance for Affordable Internet (A4AI) members recently participated in elections for new representatives to the Advisory Council, a non-fiduciary body that provides oversight and strategic direction to the Alliance’s mission, strategy, and work plans.

The A4AI with more than 80 diverse member organisations from around the world — from civil society, and the public and private sectors, is a broad coalition working to enable everyone, everywhere to access the life-changing power of the Internet.

Its mission is squarely focused on overcoming the affordability barrier to access for women, the poor, rural dwellers, and other marginalised populations that remain priced out of the digital revolution.

Specifically, A4AI is working to achieve a “1 for 2” affordability target: 1GB of mobile broadband priced at 2% or less of average monthly income.

The newly elected representatives who will begin their two-year term in January 2017 include:

Belinda Exelby, GSMA, leads relationships with international inter-governmental institutions, including the ITU, World Bank, and OECD.

Belinda is also responsible for the GSMA’s Capacity Building programme, which works with more than 20 institutional partners to deliver face-to-face and online training courses for telecoms and ICT regulators worldwide. Belinda is a Director of the US Telecommunications Training Institute and the UK Telecommunications Academy.

Johan Hellström, Sida, has worked on digital development in various ways for more than a decade, including setting up physical telecentres and conducting research on ICT-enabled election monitoring.

At Sida, Johan currently focuses on improved access to open and secure ICT. He is also finishing his PhD at Stockholm University, where he is specialising on mobile-facilitated participation and crowdsourcing, with a regional focus in East Africa.

Njideka Harry, Youth for Technology Foundation, serves as a consultant to several social enterprises, for-profit businesses with a social mission, and international agencies on matters related to technology for development, entrepreneurship, girls’/women’s welfare, and economic empowerment.

Njideka is the President & CEO of Youth for Technology Foundation, a nonprofit founded in 2000 with the mission to use technology to transform the lives of youth and women in developing countries.

Paul Rowney, MyDigitalBridge Foundation, is a social entrepreneur with more than 30 years of experience in ICTs, including with the United Nations, in the private sector, and now through civil society with the MyDigitalBridge Foundation.

Paul brings experience leading various technology ventures in Southern and Eastern Africa, and has worked on areas such as ICT education, electronic voting, and the deployment of a TV White Space pilot to connect rural communities.

Renee Wittemyer, Intel, has worked at the intersection of ICTs and development for 14 years as a researcher at Microsoft Research Labs and Intel Research Labs, and as the Director of Social Innovation at Intel.

She has conducted research on areas such as gender and the internet gap, connectivity and access, e-governance, public-private partnerships, and financial inclusion. She is currently the Director of Government Strategy at Intel.

In addition to these new members, we are also pleased to share that Lakshmi Puri of UN Women and Smeeta Hirani of World Pulse have been re-elected for a second term on the council. We are grateful for their continued service!