Staff
Michael Connor, Executive Director
Michael helped launch Open MIC following a distinguished career as a media executive, entrepreneur and journalist. He has served as a consultant for more than a decade in the field of corporate responsibility and is the owner and Editor of Business Ethics magazine, an online publication.
Michael is a former staff reporter for The Wall Street Journal and Correspondent and Senior Producer for ABC News. His television work has received numerous honors, including two national Emmys, a Columbia-duPont Award, a Writers Guild Award and a nomination for an Academy Award. He also held executive positions at Dow Jones & Co., where he led global development of the company’s TV and multimedia operations, served as CEO of a London-based pan-European business news channel and was Executive Producer of The Wall Street Journal Report, a weekly syndicated program.
Michael currently serves on the board of the Center for an Urban Future, a NYC-based think tank dedicated to highlighting the critical opportunities and challenges facing New York and other cities. He is a graduate of the College of the Holy Cross.
Audrey Mocle, Deputy Director
Audrey Mocle is an attorney with a wealth of experience in human rights and corporate responsibility. She has advised leading global businesses, international organizations, and civil society groups on all aspects of human rights governance. Prior to joining Open MIC, Audrey served as the human rights lead for Royal Bank of Canada’s Sustainability and Enterprise ESG Group. Audrey holds degrees in management and law from McGill University and a Master’s in Human Rights from the London School of Economics and Political Science. Her research on business and human rights has been cited by the UN Global Compact, the UN Environment Programme Finance Initiative, and the Supreme Court of Canada. Outside of work, Audrey sits on the Board of Directors of Relay Education, a non-profit that prepares youth for careers in the low-carbon economy.
Jessica Dheere, Advocacy Director
Jessica Dheere has a multifaceted background in the global digital rights movement, and she leverages her experience to hold government and corporate power accountable for human rights. Previously, she was director of Ranking Digital Rights, known for the Big Tech and Telco Giants scorecards. She is also founder and former executive director at SMEX, a Beirut-based, pan-Arab organization that advances digital rights in the West Asia/North Africa region. In 2018-19, she was a research fellow at Harvard University’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, where she launched the CYRILLA Collaborative, a global initiative to map, analyze, and visualize the emergence and evolution of national legal frameworks for digital rights. She graduated from Princeton University and has an M.A. in media studies from the New School in New York City. In 2014, she was one of Middlebury Language School’s Kathryn Davis Fellow for Peace.
Jie Zhang, Policy Research Manager
Jie Zhang is the Policy Research Manager at Open MIC, where she oversees corporate accountability research in the digital sector. Prior to joining Open MIC, Jie worked with Ranking Digital Rights, where she specialized in researching policy transparency among tech companies, with a particular emphasis on China’s technology landscape, policies, and regulatory environment. Her research interests include the global impacts of technological advancements, especially the development and deployment of AI, on governance models and social ecosystems.
Earlier in her career, Jie conducted in-depth research on China’s fintech sector, covering major Chinese tech companies and regulatory dynamics in the TMT industry. From 2007 to 2014, she reported for the The Washington Post’s Beijing Bureau, covering a range of high-profile topics.
Jie holds a master’s degree in Public Administration from Harvard’s Kennedy School, as well as a master’s in international relations from China Foreign Affairs University. She also studied at the Johns Hopkins University–Nanjing University Center for Chinese and American Studies.