Mozilla's Tech & Society Fellows work at the intersection of technology and social justice, building and advocating for a healthier internet. In the course of their work, fellows collaborate with host organizations in their home countries, adding sorely-needed tech savvy to the civil society sector.
Meet our inaugural cohort of Tech & Society fellows and host organizations.
Tech + Society Fellows
Alex Argüelles | Mexico
"Argüelles founded comun.al, which they describe as a “digital resilience lab” where activists can share technological tools, resources, and spaces to advance human rights and social justice. What distinguishes comun.al’s approach to digital resilience is the understanding of the complex matrix of violence, oppression and inequity that creates different divides across race, class and gender amongst civil society."
—From the Mozilla profile "Helping Marginalized Communities Fight Digital Violence and Gain Representation." Read the full profile.
Amarela Ribeiro | Brazil
"Today, even though people use the Internet on a daily basis, most don’t know how it works and don’t know the political arrangements that support it. They don’t know the political choices that, by shaping the Internet, also shape our lives. My work today consists of facilitating conversations about these issues."
—From the Mozilla profile "Teaching Activists about Online Surveillance." Read the full profile.
Brian Obilo | Kenya
"Obilo is developing a civic space cybersecurity monitoring tool. The aim is for the platform to uncover and learn key cybersecurity trends and changes in the civil society space and beyond."
—From the Mozilla profile "Helping Civil Society Adapt to Online Threats." Read the full profile.
Jessica Chemali | Lebanon
"Chemali knew she wanted to use technology to help people make more rational political decisions in her home country of Lebanon. 'My interest has always been in understanding human behavior and cognition,' she says. Part of Chemali’s current work means identifying the factors that make it challenging for voters to assess politicians’ records and decide for whom to vote, but her longer-term goals include challenging dysfunctional public institutions, the lack of rule of law, and deep societal divisions."
—From the Mozilla profile "Using Technology to Make Lebanon’s Parliament More Transparent and Accountable." Read the full profile.
Julie Ricard | Brazil
"Julie Ricard watched the 2018 election unfold in her native Brazil with concern, realizing the country was heading into new, unsettling territory. Far-right candidate Jair Bolsanaro won in a runoff after a tense campaign season marked by large protests against his homophobic, racist, and misogynistic rhetoric. The election was also likely influenced by widespread disinformation on social media and messaging platforms that mostly favored Bolsonaro. 'That weaponization of disinformation is something that caught my attention,' says Ricard."
—From the Mozilla profile "Building a Better Social Media Platform." Read the full profile.
Nadine Moawad | Lebanon
"Nadine Moawad likes to say that the internet saved her life. She was born in the early 1980s to a Lebanese family and grew up in Kuwait, moving to Beirut after the Iraqi invasion in 1990. Moawad was raised in what she describes as a small, isolated, and conservative community with no real libraries, and limited access to information — a difficult environment for a queer adolescent. She remembers using the internet for the first time when she was about 16. 'I have a very personal relationship with the internet — the original internet as a public domain. It opened up this amazing world of being able to talk to people as an anonymous user, and being able to access information,”'she says."
—From the Mozilla profile "Fighting for Artists’ Rights in Digital Spaces." Read the full profile.
Odanga Madung | Kenya
"As a Mozilla Fellow, Odanga Madung has exposed a flourishing disinformation industry in Kenya, and pushed social media platforms to confront it. But Madung’s fellowship almost didn’t happen."
—From the Mozilla profile "Holding Tech Platforms Accountable in Kenya." Read the full profile.
Tarcizio Silva | Brazil
"Silva strongly prefers the term 'algorithmic racism' over 'algorithmic bias' in relation to his work. He defines 'algorithmic racism' as when social media, apps, and AI reproduce or exacerbate racism in society, and says it more accurately encompasses the problems with the technology itself; the data we feed into the technology; and how deeply society relies on and trusts the technology. 'The problems I’m denouncing are related to how structural racism is connected with the idea of using technology for mediating everything,' says Silva, whose 2022 book, Racismo Algorítmico, examines artificial intelligence and discrimination in digital networks."
—From the Mozilla profile "Exposing Algorithmic Racism." Read the full profile.
Reem Al-Masri | Jordan
"It was 2013, soon after the end of the Arab Spring and Reem Al-Masri was working at a magazine in Jordan. One day they were online and reaching their audience as usual — and the next, they were blocked. This forced Al-Masri and her team to learn how internet infrastructure worked and affected them."
—From the Mozilla profile "Helping Journalists Sharpen Their Understanding of Internet Governance." Read the full profile.
Tech + Society Host Organizations
As part of the design for the Tech + Society Fellowship Program, technology strategists are placed - as Fellows - with host organizations and coalitions that are foundational to the strength and capacity of regional civil society in select regions.
In the course of their work, Mozilla Tech + Society Fellows collaborate with host organizations in their home countries, adding sorely-needed tech savvy to the civil society sector.
These 10 organizations hosted fellows as part of our 2020-2022 cohort.
Brazil
- Ação Educativa | São Paulo, Brazil
- Federação de Órgãos para Assistência Social e Educacional (FASE) | Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Kenya
- Katiba Institute | Nairobi, Kenya
- Poverty Eradication Network | Nairobi, Kenya
Middle East & Northern Africa
- Culture Resource (Al-Mawred Al-Thaqafy) | Beirut, Lebanon & Brussels, Belgium
- International Media Support, Febrayer Network of Independent Media | Amman, Jordan & Berlin, Germany
- Legal Agenda | Beirut, Lebanon & Tunis, Tunisia
Mexico
- Centro de Derechos Humanos Miguel Agustin Pro Juarez | Mexico City, Mexico
- EQUIS Justicia para las Mujeres | Mexico City, Mexico
India
- Mahila SEWA Trust | Ahmedabad, India