In October Mozilla announced the 2023 Creative Media Awards calling for all creatives working at the intersection of art and artificial intelligence (AI) to apply. Today we announce the judges who will select the Award winners who will receive between $15,000 and $30,000 to help bring their project to life on the web.
Said Kofi Yeboah, Mozilla Program Officer: “This year’s Creative Media Awards will convene people and projects who highlight the challenges, opportunities, and implications of designing “responsible” AI across different geographies, demographics, and cultures. It’s crucial that the AI systems around us are designed responsibly — but does ‘responsibly’ mean the same thing in every country and context?”
This year’s Creative Media Awards will convene people and projects who highlight the challenges, opportunities, and implications of designing “responsible” AI across different geographies, demographics, and cultures. It’s crucial that the AI systems around us are designed responsibly — but does ‘responsibly’ mean the same thing in every country and context?
Kofi Yeboah, Mozilla Program Officer
Judges will be looking for projects that examine the role and importance of responsible, ethical or justice-centered design in trustworthy AI. Read more about this year’s program here.
Meet the judges:
Kathy Pham
Kathy is a computer scientist, product leader, and founder with experience across the private and public sectors, and a love for developing products, building and leading teams, data, healthcare, and weaving public service and advocacy into all aspects of life. Kathy is a fellow and adjunct lecturer on product management at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, an affiliate at the Harvard Berkman Klein Center, and fellow in residence at Mozilla where she co-leads the Responsible Computer Science Challenge. She is Founder and Executive Director of Product and Society, and founder of The Ethical Tech Collective.
Sarah Allen
Sarah is the Director of Mozilla Festival at Mozilla Foundation. She designs convenings for the global community to connect and collaborate with each other using the principles of open, movement organising, and federated design. These convenings empower the community to raise the most pressing issues they face in their online lives today and build solutions with other participants.
Maurice Otieno
Maurice is the Executive Director at Baraza Media Lab. Before Baraza Media Lab, Maurice worked with Metta Africa and Strathmore Business School. He has been a consistent supporter of the startup ecosystem in Kenya and Africa at large. Maurice is an entrepreneur inspired by innovative ideas and collaborative problem-solving. His skills and expertise are in the intersection of Policy, Innovation and community design. He also has extensive experience in accounting at various companies across Kenya, including General Motors, FarmChem and Sameer Africa. Maurice holds a Bachelor of Commerce from Strathmore University, Kenya and is currently pursuing his MBA at Warwick Business School.
Nisma Zaman
Nisma Zaman is a multifaceted director, producer (Emmy-winning), filmmaker, editor, manager, and educator working with interactive creative technologies and digital content. At CityTech, Nisma taught the Emerging Media Foundation course that covers design-thinking, game development, media computation, physical computing, and music tech. Over a five-year period, Nisma created and produced a wide variety of digital content, including over 160 videos filmed in NYC, Singapore, Hong Kong, London, and Mexico City, for a global contemporary art initiative at the Guggenheim Museum (guggenheim.org/map), and also conceived several interactive web modules. Prior to that, she traveled to Liberia, South Africa, and Uganda, producing digital content and interactive training materials for ICTJ over four years. Nisma holds a Masters with honors from NYU’s ITP (interactive art, design, tech program) and a BFA in Film, Photography, and Visual Arts from Ithaca College (recipient of the Dean’s Award, Senior Documentary Film Grant Award, Phi Kappa Phi, and other honors). Currently, Nisma is the Director, Digital at Tactile Pictures.
Esther Mwema
Esther Mwema is an artist and part of Mozilla’s 2022 Creative Media Awards cohort who are using arts to reimagine how data is governed. She is a digital inequalities practitioner with expertise in internet governance, digital transformation, and innovation. She has over a decade of social impact at the intersection of youth, technology, and gender through her non-profits Digital Grassroots and SAFIGI Outreach Foundation and years of experience working at the high level with the United Nations. Esther is an Open Internet Leader who prioritises African feminist and decolonial practice. She is also a fiction author.
Miguel Morachimo
Miguel is a Program Officer at Mozilla’s Data Futures Lab. He also holds a Law degree from Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú , a Master in Law, Science and Technology from Stanford Law School and a Master in Business Administration, with a major in Innovation and Entrepreneurship, from the Rotman School of Management from the University of Toronto. He has worked on, digital projects in local government and in the nonprofit sector. Between 2011 and 2012, he was a Cabinet Advisor on Digital Government to the Mayor of Miraflores, a central district in Lima. He also founded the digital rights nonprofit Hiperderecho in Peru and served as its Executive Director between 2013 and 2021.
Tarcizio Silva
Tarcízio is a former Tech and Society fellow with Mozilla. He worked with Ação Educativa to understand how civil society organizations respond to digital safety needs and algorithmic harms to minorities in Brazil, in order to produce context-specific knowledge and tools for activists, high school teachers, and technologists. Before joining Mozilla, Tarcizio was a research manager and partner at IBPAD, where he also curated online courses on digital methods. Besides that, Tarcizio is a PhD candidate at UFABC, studying algorithmic resistances, and responsible for Desvelar, an editorial project to promote Afrodiasporic thought about technology and society.
Koliwe Majama
Koliwe is the Senior Program Officer, Fellowships & Awards, at Mozilla Foundation. She is a Zimbabwean Media, Information, Communications and Technologies consultant with over 15 years of experience working in civil society lobby and advocacy. As a Master in Public Policy and Governance, Koliwe is invested in research, strategy and thought leadership on varying internet governance trends in Africa. Prior to joining Mozilla, Koliwe worked with the Association for Progressive Communications as the Coordinator of the African Declaration on Internet Rights and Freedoms (AfDec) coalition and Organiser of the African School on Internet Governance (AfriSIG).,
Abeba Birhane
Abeba Birhane is a cognitive scientist researching human behavior, social systems, and responsible and ethical artificial intelligence (AI). Her interdisciplinary research explores various broad themes in cognitive science, AI, complexity science, and theories of decoloniality. More specifically, Birhane examines the challenges and pitfalls of computational models (and datasets) from a conceptual, empirical, and critical perspective. Abeba’s fellowship with Mozilla focuses on auditing canonical datasets as well as exploring ways to clean and detoxify large scale datasets, including the governance models needed to maintain and manage those datasets.