Speakers Speakers (Decidim Fest 2025)

Amandine is COO and co-founder of Element (https://element.io), an open source, secure and sovereign communication platform built on Matrix (https://matrix.org), the open standard for secure and open communications. Element brings sovereign communications to heterogeneous organisations who can’t rely on commercial cloud offerings, let alone non end-to-end encrypted ones. 

Matrix, which Amandine also co-founded, is a unique initiative aiming to democratise secure online communication and solve the problem of fragmentation in current Chat, VoIP, VR and IoT technologies. Matrix aims to create an ecosystem that makes open real-time-communication as universal and interoperable as email, and brings the power back to the user on choosing who they trust with their data and how they want to communicate. Element delivers Matrix solutions to millions of users, including NATO, the UN, the German Armed Forces, the US Navy and private companies like Mozilla. 

Amandine is also a founding member of the European Open Source Academy and the lead of the Business and Impact unit within the Academy.

Andy is an experienced technology professional, Open Source advocate, hardware tinkerer, and social bridge-builder, based in the UK. Andy has an extensive background at IBM, VMware, and Twitter, as well as freelance with multiple Open Source projects and communities.

Andy has spoken on community, education, and technology topics on stages and at events around the globe (as well as virtually) - with a passion to explain and unpack new technologies, and to inspire others to try new things.

Follow Andy in the Fediverse on Mastodon @andypiper@macaw.social

PhD in Political Science from the UAB. Master's Degree in Introduction to Research in Political Science and Administration: Thinking and Governing Complex Societies (UAB), Postgraduate Degree in Participation and Sustainable Development (UAB) and Master's Degree in Social Economy and Management and Administration of Non-Profit Organisations (UB).

She is currently an associate professor in the Department of Political Science and Public Law at the UAB.

She works in public administration as Director of the Technical Office for Participation in Local Government (Barcelona Provincial Council), advising and training political and technical teams from local councils in the Barcelona area on how to involve citizens in the design, implementation and evaluation of public policies related to different areas of local government.

Carol Romero is a technologist with over 20 years of experience in digital innovation, open government, and citizen participation. Cofounder of Decidim, she is currently the project’s Product Director.

Transdisciplinary scholar, writer and educator, currently Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University, Founding Director of the Ida B. Wells JUST Data Lab, and author of four books, Imagination: A Manifesto (2024), Viral Justice (2022), Race After Technology (2019), and People’s Science (2013), and editor of Captivating Technology (2019).

She writes, teaches, and speaks widely about the relationship between innovation and inequity, knowledge and power, race and citizenship, health and justice.

Emma Ghariani is the Director of the Open Source and Digital Commons division at the French Interministerial Delegation for Digital Affairs (DINUM). She is focused on developing and supporting meaningful public-commons cooperations in France and Europe. Emma is passionate about social and digital innovations, and she holds degrees from Sciences Po and the National Institute of Oriental Languages and Civilizations.

Francesca is an innovation economist and digital policy expert working at the intersection of technology, geopolitics, economics, and society. She is an Honorary Professor at the Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose at UCL in London and a member of the High-Level Roundtable for the New European Bauhaus, established by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. She's currently a Senior Fellow at Stiftung Mercator in Berlin, where she leads the EuroStack report on Europe’s Digital Sovereignty (www.euro-stack.info).

Previously, Francesca served as President of the Italian National Innovation Fund and was a board member of RAI, Italy’s public broadcasting company. She has advised the United Nations on digital cities and digital rights and was the Chief Technology and Digital Innovation Officer for the City of Barcelona. Throughout her career, she has led major European research and innovation projects focused on digital sovereignty, digital democracy, and decentralized platforms.

Project Manager of Decidim in Japan, leading its adoption in Kakogawa City and other municipalities.
Born in 1978, he graduated from the Faculty of Law, University of Tokyo. Kenjiro specializes in public administration management and data science.

Marc Serra Solé, Deputy Chairman of the Climate Action and Energy Transition Division of the Diputació de Barcelona. Jurist and sociologist. He worked during the 2015-2019 mandate as advisor of the third tenure of mayor in the Area of Citizenship Rights, Participation and Transparency from where, among other things, was one of the promoters of the new Office for Non-Discrimination and one of those responsible for active registration policies and the Neighbourhood Document to prevent the expulsion and detention of immigrants in an irregular situation. In addition, he has been coordinator of the strategy of the popular accusation in the case for the police charges of 1 October in which the City Council of Barcelona is personified. Previously he was part of the platform "Tanquem els CIE" and collaborated with several entities of defense of the human rights of the city. He co-directed the documentary "Tarajal: desmuntant la impunitat a la frontera sud".

Marta G. Franco is part of Laintersección, a collective that collaborates with organisations and social movements to design digital strategies and research and nurture new narratives. She has published the book “Las redes son nuestras. Una historia popular de internet y un mapa para volver a habitarla” (Consonni, 2024). She has been an internet user since 1999. She has been involved in Indymedia, hackmeetings and hacklabs, and the 15M movement. She coordinated the networks and technology section of the newspaper Diagonal and was a mediator at the Medialab-Prado digital culture centre. She has also worked in political communication and was responsible for the Madrid City Council's social media strategy for four years. She continues to strive to make the internet a habitable place and is therefore part of Algorights, a community of people interested in artificial intelligence from a human rights perspective, and the ‘Vámonos juntas’ campaign, which promotes collective migration to Mastodon and the fediverse.

Political scientist specializing in public policy, democratic participation, and technological sovereignty. He is currently the Director of the Technical Office at the Decidim Association and a member of Decidim's Product Team.

Pamela Krosta-Hartl has been committed to strengthening Germany's digital sovereignty for more than a decade and is co-author of several publications that have been produced since 2015 as part of the Digital Sovereignty Focus Group at the BMWi and the Digital Sovereignty Think Tank. In 2021, after more than 20 years in the private sector, she moved to the federal administration and helped build up the Federal Government's DigitalService as part of the leadership team. Since April 2024, she has been head of Corporate Strategy & Communications at ZenDiS. 

Petter is a co-founder of Digidem Lab, a development lab and consultancy for citizen participation that has provided  training and digital platforms for the EU Commission, New York City, Chicago and various Swedish cities.

Digidem Lab introduced Decidim in Sweden in 2019 and has since then implemented the platform for a range of cities, districts and public housing companies.

Robin Berjon is a technologist specialising in the governance of digital tech. He is deputy director of the IPFS Foundation. Previously he was VP of Data Governance at The New York Times, where he worked on privacy and safeguarding media independence, and Vice-Chair of the board of the World Wide Web Consortium. His work focuses on building durable democratic governance of technology so that our digital sphere starts operating in the public interest at the planetary scale.

As Technology Strategist on the Digital Equity Team of New York City’s Civic Engagement Commission (CEC), Sonia is tasked with creating the CEC’s online participatory spaces and other digital tools for civic engagement. She works hard to ensure the equitability of the CEC’s digital programs re: accessibility, algorithm and process fairness, and an understanding of the equity effects of emerging technologies. Sonia manages participate.nyc.gov, New York City’s implementation of Decidim. Prior to working at the CEC, Sonia was a web engineer and volunteered as a technologist for voter protection and ballot rescue programs in the United States, where trust in civic processes is very low and disenfranchisement of minority groups has historically been built into our electoral systems.