How the Internet has broken democracy, and what we can do now

Sue Gardner’s work is motivated by the desire to ensure that everybody in the world has access to the information they want and need, so they are equipped to make the best-possible decisions. When she started her career, her tool for that was journalism; now it is the internet. Gardner spent the first decade of her career as a journalist, working in radio, TV, print and online. In 2003 she was appointed head of CBC.CA, the website of one of Canada’s best-loved cultural institutions, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. In 2007, Gardner became executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit that operates Wikipedia, the world’s largest and most popular encyclopedia. In her six years with Wikimedia she grew it into a healthy sustainable organisation with 70 million in annual revenues, and established Wikipedia as a reputable global information source that stood strong against attempts at censorship. Today, Gardner serves as an advisor and board member for a variety of non-profit, grantmaking and policy organizations, mostly related to technology, media, gender, and digital freedoms. She was co-chair of the campaign to persuade President Obama to pardon NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. She is special advisor to the Wikimedia Foundation, a board member of Global Voices, the Ada Initiative, the Wiki Education Foundation, and the Sunlight Foundation, and is advisor to Creative Commons and the Committee to Protect Journalists. Gardner has an honorary doctorate of laws from Ryerson University, was named a Technology Pioneer for the World Economic Forum at Davos, has been ranked by Forbes magazine as the world’s 70th most powerful woman, was the inaugural recipient of the Knight Foundation’s Innovation Award, received the Cultural Humanist of the Year award from the Harvard Humanist Association, and is a proud recipient of the Nyan Cat Medal of Internet Awesomeness for Defending Internet Freedom.