THE Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust has appointed two new advisors whose expertise in digital technology will inform our grant-making.
Sébastien A. Krier and Susan Morgan have been appointed to our Power and Accountability committee, which spends over £2 million a year in support of those working for a world in which power is more equally shared and powerful institutions are accountable to wider society.
Séb (pictured above left) is a senior technology policy researcher at Stanford University’s Cyber Policy Centre and researches the impact of emerging technologies on liberal democracy and authoritarianism. Prior to that, Séb was an independent consultant focusing on Artificial Intelligence policy, regulation, and strategy. He also worked as a lawyer specialising in international disputes and human rights before joining the UK Government’s Office for Artificial Intelligence as a policy advisor in 2018.
Susan (pictured above right) is an independent consultant working on the intersection of technology and society. Between 2016 and 2019 she worked at the Open Society Foundations, developing international grant-making strategies on disinformation, the online public sphere, algorithmic discrimination and big data. Prior to that she was the first executive director of the Global Network Initiative; a Washington DC based multi-stakeholder initiative focused on the responsibilities of technology companies to protect the free expression and privacy rights of their users when receiving government requests around the world. She spent ten years working at British Telecom (BT) including six years focused on corporate responsibility, leading BT’s strategy, policy and public reporting.
Grant-making committees at JRCT are made up of trustees, staff and our expert advisors, known as co-optees. We currently have 19 co-optees with expertise, including lived experience, relating to our five programme areas.