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demystifying technology
for non-profits

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Who We Are

Tactical Tech is a team of 13 people spread out in 6 countries. We are guided by our Advisory Board Members and supported by a variety of funders, which are mainly private foundations. See details below.

EXECUTIVE, FINANCE AND ADMINISTRATION

Stephanie Hankey - Co-founder and Executive Director. Stephanie spent five years with the Open Society Institute working on their Electronic Publishing Program and then establishing the Tech Support for Civil Society Program. Stephanie has a background in information design; worked as a creative director and producer for a number of London-based multimedia companies, and was editor-in-chief of Pulp, a bi-weekly youth magazine. She has a Masters in Computer Related Design from the Royal College of Art (London).

Stephanie has nine years of experience working with advocacy organisations. She is currently working towards a Certificate in Campaigning. She is also on the Advisory Board for FLOSS manuals.

Marek Tuszynski - Co-founder and Director of Programs and Technology. Marek was previously engaged with the arts and independent culture - writing, curating exhibitions and organising festivals, mostly in the 'post-soviet' territories. In the mid-nineties he co-founded the International Network of Contemporary Art Centres and worked with others to create a television programme about independent culture in Poland.

In parallel Marek was director of the Stefan Batory Foundation’s Internet programme (Warsaw). He sat on the board of Klon/Jawor (a research and infrastructure NGO)and The Second Hand Bank (a distributor of refurbished electronic equipment).Marek worked as a consultant to many funding agencies focusing on information and communication strategies for civil society in Central Asia.

Richard Docwra - Director of Operations and Communications. Richard is the former Chief Executive of charity fundraising agency TW CAT, where he built the business and infrastructure to achieve a 20-fold growth in turnover within 3 years. He is also the founder and director of ChangeStar, a think tank, consultancy and service provider to the not-for-profit sector.

He has worked in the not-for profit sector for over 12 years, with a particular focus on issues of social justice and the environment, including work with Oxfam, Concern Worldwide and CND. He is an experienced communicator, fundraiser, strategic planner and writer.

Jan Griffiths - Financial Co-ordinator. Jan's role is to keep the financial wheels of the organisation well-oiled. She brings a wealth of experience in finance and administration, having co-founded and managed a number of small, successful businesses in the corporate sector. She has a BA (Hons) in Business Administration and a Post-Graduate Diploma in Business Management. Introduced to the world of activism through her two grown-up children, she is glad to be able to put her years of experience to good use in an altruistic environment.

Poornima Ramakrishna - Consultant. Poornima is currently helping Tactical Tech with registering the Bangalore office. She is an operations expert with over 10 years of experience in finance, administration, logistics, HR, project management, legal and company affairs within non-profit organisations. She was, for almost a decade, a valuable member of the core Mahiti team.

She has a Masters in Sociology and is presently working towards an MBA and a certification as Company Secretary.

PROJECTS

Andrew Lowenthal - Project Lead. Andrew is a media and technology activist based in Melbourne. He has worked with participatory and online media initiatives since 1998. Andrew is the NGO-in-a-box series editor and leads Tactical Tech's work in the area of 'Participatory Media'. When not working with Tactical Tech, he is a project manager within EngageMedia collective, a video sharing website and free software project focused on social and environmental issues in the Asia-Pacific.

Andrew's video work has screened at the National Gallery of Indonesia and the Centre for Contemporary Art in Glasgow.

Becky Faith - Projects Lead. Becky leads Tactical Tech's Mobiles projects. She is an experienced producer and technologist who has worked in new media production since 1995. She also has experience in community video production. Becky worked for Fahamu, creating online human rights training materials for NGOs and the United Nations. She was web manager for Pambazuka News: an award winning multimedia site covering social justice in Africa. She has developed knowledge sharing and information sites with southern African health organisations.

She is passionate about the potential of mobile phones in advocacy and campaigning. She has implemented projects using mobile technologies for campaigning in Africa, including the Global Call to Action against Poverty.

Currently, she is working towards an MSc. in Technology Strategy Research at the Open University.

Chris Walker - Project Lead. Chris is involved with the security edition of NGO-in-a-box. He works with international non-governmental organizations on issues related to human rights and information & communication technology (ICT). In this capacity, he has contributed technical advice, implemented software and systems prototypes, and provided substantial management assistance for large-scale, security-related ICT projects targeting politically oppressive countries. His emphasis, recently, has been on censorship-circumvention and anonymity software, GSM-based voice and SMS services, and information security.

Chris has a Master's degree in International Relations from the Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy, where he studied practical, theoretical and technical coursework relevant to the interplay between ICT and human rights in the developing world and in closed societies.

Dirk Slater - Project Lead. Dirk leads Tech's Movement Building programme area. Prior to this, he was Senior Circuit Rider for the Low-Income Networking and Communications (LINC) Project of the Welfare Law Centre, helping advocacy and activist groups across the United States increase their capacity through the use of technology. Dirk serves on the board for the Progressive Technology Project.

Besides working in the economic justice area, Dirk also has experience working on environmental justice, voter rights and queer issues.

Sophia Kamaruddin - Project Coordinator. Sophia provides support to the movement building and skills building projects. She recently completed her MA in Development Economics at the University of Sussex. She has been actively involved in New Delhi with issues of gender, sexuality, HIV/AIDS, and has extensive campaigning and advocacy experience.

TECH, PRODUCTION AND SYSTEM ADMINISTRATION

Allan Stanley - Head of Production. Allan is information designer and production guru. He was also a long-standing member of the Bangalore-based technology NGO, Mahiti (http://www.mahiti.org). At Mahiti, he headed up the design function, specialising in information architecture and the usability of web-based and multimedia applications. Over the last 10 years he has managed numerous technology projects for NGOs, and conceptualised projects such as a series of digital pedagogic games and tools to teach soft skills and literacy to young adults in rural India.

Allan was an organiser for AsiaSource and AfricaSource 2 and led the local production team for the World Information City exhibition (India).

Bobby Soriano - Project Lead. Bobby is working on the further development of the NGO-In-A-Box and toolkits. He was also involved in other training and source camp activities of Tactical Tech. Bobby has fifteen solid years of systems and network administration experience, developing NGO-tools and implementing projects, He has also spent five years as an information and communications technology trainer.

Bobby has worked for non-profit agencies in the Philippines for the past 20 years focusing on utilising technology to support advocacy. This includes the Institute for Popular Democracy, Management and Organizational Development for Empowerment, the Philippines Peasant Insitute and The Ford Foundation.

Evelyn Namara - System Administrator. Evelyn is the System Administrator of Online services maintained by Tactical Technology Collective. She was previously working with Linux Solutions as the Solutions Engineer and dealt with tasks such as Systems administration, building and maintaining UNIX based servers for the company's clients, and carrying out troubleshooting services when systems went down.

Alongside building and maintaining of UNIX based servers, she also dealt with setting up of networks, LANs, WANs, VPN solutions among others. Evelyn was part of Africa Source 2 that was held in Kampala Uganda in 2006 as a participant and volunteer and was also involved in the network setup at the Source camp.

FUNDERS

Tactical Tech is funded by a variety of private foundations. These include: Hivos (http://www.hivos.org), the Open Society Institute (http://www.soros.org), the Oak Foundation (http://www.oakfnd.org/) and the Sigrid Rausing Trust (http://www.sigrid-rausing-trust.org/). In the past we have also received funding from IDRC (http://www.idrc.ca), Inwent (http://www.inwent.org), UNDP-IOSN (http://www.iosn.net/) and Omidyar (http://www.omidyar.net). Tactical Tech also raises money for its initiatives through sub-contracted grants from partnerships, most significantly working with Internews Europe (http://www.internews.fr).

We receive a limited amount of private donations and fees for products and services.