SEPTEMBER 25, 2023 | Jessica Dheere has been appointed Advocacy Director of Open MIC, where she will help lead the organization’s work on key policy issues and campaigns in the tech and media sectors.
Jessica was most recently Director of Ranking Digital Rights, an organization that works to promote freedom of expression and privacy on the internet by creating global standards and incentives for companies to respect and protect user’s rights.
Open MIC advocates for greater corporate accountability in the design and deployment of technology, principally through shareholder engagement and other finance-focused strategies. In recent years, Open MIC has led high-visibility shareholder initiatives involving virtually all of the leading tech and telecommunications companies, including Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, AT&T, Comcast, Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter and Verizon.
“Jessica is a leader in the field of digital rights advocacy and we are delighted that she’s joining our team,” said Michael Connor, Executive Director of Open MIC. “As we work with investors to hold tech companies accountable for the impact of their policies and practices on people’s lives, Jessica’s skills and experience will be extremely valuable.”
“Finance-focused strategies promise to be a game-changer in advancing human rights in the digital age,” said Jessica Dheere. “I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to build on Open MIC’s pioneering work in this field and to explore new frontiers, by broadening the base of people who are adept at challenging corporate power to ensure that information technologies do not compromise—and ideally reinforce—social justice and people’s expression, privacy, and labor rights.”
In addition to her work at Ranking Digital Rights, Jessica is the founder, former executive director, and a board member of SMEX, the Arab region’s leading digital rights research and advocacy organization. As a 2018–19 research fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, she launched the CYRILLA Collaborative, a global legal database on digital rights law.
Jessica has presented at the Internet Governance Forum, the Milton Wolf Seminar on Media and Diplomacy, RightsCon, and the International Journalism Festival.Her relevant publications include “Misguiding Multistakeholderism: A Nongovernmental Perspective on the Arab IGF,” and a legal research methodology for locating digital rights-related law. She was a member of the inaugural Advisory Network to the Freedom Online Coalition..
Jessica graduated from Princeton University with a bachelor’s degree in art history and Latin American studies and earned her master’s in media studies from the New School in New York City. In 2014, she was awarded a scholarship to study intensive Arabic as a Middlebury College Kathryn Davis Fellow for Peace.
For more information:
Michael Connor
Executive Director, Open MIC
media@openmic.org
212-875-9381