Committee of Management (Board)
Martin Potter – President
Martin Potter is a researcher and a faculty member of the School of Communication and Creative Arts at Deakin University in Victoria, Australia. Prior to this, he was an Associate Professor at James Cook University and has worked with Monash University and the University of Queensland’s Centre of Communication for Social Change.
He is a multi-award-winning creative director and producer of transmedia and media for development projects and is a director of the Big Stories Co. His work includes the participatory media projects Big Stories, Small Towns, which won the Community Champion at SXSW Interactive; Stereopublic: crowdsourcing the quiet, winner of a TED City 2.0 award; and The White Building which ran from 2010 to 2017 in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.
He has completed a PhD in Screen Studies from Flinders University in South Australia.
Edmon Chung – Vice-President
Edmon Chung is a social innovator and entrepreneur. Edmon is currently the CEO of DotAsia and serves on the Board of ICANN, the Executive Committee of Internet Society Hong Kong (ISOC HK), the Board of Make a Difference (MaD) Institute, and heads the secretariat for the Asia Pacific Regional Internet Governance Forum (APrIGF).
Edmon also served on the founding board of the Internet Governance Forum Support Association (IGFSA) and continues to support its secretariat, and participates extensively in Internet governance and social innovation matters.
Edmon has a Bachelor of Applied Science, a Master of Engineering from the University of Toronto, and a Master of Arts in Theology at the Lutheran Theological Seminary.
Ken M. P. Setiawan - Secretary
Dr Ken M.P. Setiawan is Senior Lecturer in Indonesian Studies at the Asia Institute, The University of Melbourne.
She is also an Associate at the Centre for Indonesian Law, Islam and Society (CILIS) at the Melbourne Law School. Ken’s research interests include globalisation and human rights, as well as gender and civil society. She has widely published on the politics of human rights in Indonesia, including in the Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences of Southeast Asia, Journal of Contemporary Asia and Human Rights Quarterly. Her most recent book, co-authored with Dirk Tomsa, is Politics in Contemporary Indonesia: Institutional Change, Policy Challenges and Democratic Decline (Routledge, 2022).
Ken teaches in all areas of Indonesian Studies, including language.
Aim Sinpeng – Member
Aim Sinpeng is a senior lecturer in the Department of Government and International Relations at the University of Sydney. She is the co-founder of the Sydney Cybersecurity Network and Thailand coordinator of the Sydney Southeast Asia Centre. An award-winning educator, Aim is passionate about digital rights and internet freedom.
A native of Thailand, Aim has 15 years of experience in finance and international development, having worked for the World Bank and IHS Markit. She continues to consult on political and market risk, media development, and digitisation in the Asia Pacific.
Aim completed her PhD in Political Science from the University of British Columbia in 2014. She also holds a Master of Arts degree in Russian and East European Studies from the University of Toronto. Aim has lived and worked in Europe, North America, Asia, and Australia and speaks five languages.
Ambika Sharma (PhD) - Member
Dr. Ambika Sharma is a development sector professional with 25+ years of progressive global experience in organizational development and change management, strategic alliances, participatory multi-stakeholder engagement, evidence-based policy research management, programme management, and knowledge management. Sharma’s professional experience spans South and Southeast Asia.
Dr. Sharma spearheads a global chamber for women in business, championing the empowerment of 150,000+ women entrepreneurs in over 30 countries. Her leadership at Association of Business Women in Commerce & Industry (ABWCI) underscores a commitment to fostering collaborations for creating opportunities, and advocating for supportive ecosystems, contributing significantly to both economic growth and the advancement of women-led development on a global scale
Prior to this, she was with The Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) and has worked with Canada’s International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Winrock International (WII) and the Development Alternatives (DA) group.
Annie Zaman - Member
Annie Zaman is an independent journalist and researcher. She is the co-founder and Director of Exile Hub, with over 15 years of experience in promoting freedom of expression in challenging Asian contexts. She supports human rights defenders and journalists in distress.
Annie has reported for media outlets including DW, BBC, and Global Voices. Since 2021, she serves as a senior advisor for Free Press Unlimited on journalist safety and impunity in Asia with a special focus on Myanmar, Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Emil Tapnio - Member
Emil Tapnio currently serves as the Senior Youth Leadership Development Specialist at the Asia Foundation. Tapnio has over 15 years of technical and management experience in designing and implementing interventions in the fields of education, economic empowerment, and human rights, with a focus on youth political participation and social involvement. To date, his program portfolio funding counts over US$50 million from USAID, the US Department of State, Australian Aid, UNDP, and the Philippine Government.
Since earning a degree in Public Administration from the University of the Philippines-Diliman, Mr. Tapnio has championed innovative leadership in the development sector. He regularly conducts training and workshops for young leaders, and has presented on youth leadership, entrepreneurship, and technology at the United Nations Headquarters in New York and Bangkok; the World Bank, the US Department of State, the US Congressional Youth Leadership Forum in Washington, D.C; and numerous universities in the US and the Philippines.
Emmanuel C. Lallana (“Boying”) - Member
Emmanuel C. Lallana is Chief Executive of ideacorp – an independent, non-profit organization focused on the use of digital technology to create inclusive societies, promote democratic governance, develop digital economies, ensure quality education and create resilient communities.
Dr Lallana works on Digital Development (also called ICT for Development or ICT4D), particularly National ICT Policy Development, Data Driven Governance, Digital Government, Data Privacy, Digital Transformation and AI for Development.
At present, he is a Member, Technical Panel on Political Science, Commission on Higher Education (CHED), Republic of the Philippines and an Adjunct Professor, Mindanao State University Tawi-Tawi College of Oceanography and Technology. He also served as Digital Transformation Adviser of the President of the University of the Philippines.
Ging Cristobal - Member
Ging Cristobal is the Project Coordinator for OutRight International, Co-coordinator of the Stop the Discrimination Coalition in the Philippines, a former board member of Amnesty International – Philippines, and the Chairperson of the Board of Trustees of the ASEAN SOGIESC Caucus.
Her work includes implementing the project for older LGBTIQ persons, implementing SOGIESC-inclusive protocol to address gender-based violence experienced by LGBTIQ persons in various cities in the Philippines, and legislative advocacy work for the enactment of the SOGIESC and the comprehensive anti-discrimination bills in the Philippines.
Malavika Jayaram – Member
Malavika Jayaram is the inaugural Executive Director of Digital Asia Hub, a Hong Kong-based independent research think-tank incubated by the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, where she is also a Faculty Associate.
A technology lawyer for over 15 years, she practised law at Allen & Overy, London, and was Vice President and Technology Counsel at Citigroup. She taught India’s first course on Information Technology & Law in 1997 and is adjunct faculty at Northwestern University’s Pritzker School of Law in Chicago.
She is on the Advisory Board of Mozilla’s Tech Policy Fellowship, and is an Associate Fellow with Chatham House (the Royal Institute of International Affairs), as part of its Asia-Pacific Programme. She is a member of the High-Level Expert Advisory Group to the OECD project, “Going Digital: Making the Transformation Work for Growth and Well-being”. Malavika tweets at @MalJayaram.
Matthew Nguyen - Member
Matt Nguyen is a Technology Fellow within the Ford Foundation where he works on how technology and its governance intersects with civic space. Prior to Ford, Matthew was based in Singapore with the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, where he worked on internet and technology policy issues within the Asia-Pacific region. Before that, he helped build Reset. Tech Australia, a policy and advocacy organization focused on driving action on data governance, online harms and platform accountability.
Phet Sayo – Member
Phet Sayo builds and oversees EngageMedia’s strategy, develops fundraising opportunities, creates and sustains partnerships and collaborations, and provides top-level oversight of finance, operations, programs, and technology.
Phet brings decades of experience in information, communications, and technology for development, and Internet governance. Prior to joining EngageMedia, he served 15 years as a Senior Program Officer at the International Development Research Center (IDRC). At the IDRC, his portfolio included work on access to connectivity, access to knowledge, digital rights and the right to privacy, field building for communications policy, platformisation and the future of work, and Artificial Intelligence for development.
Prior to his post with the IDRC, he led ICT for development initiatives as a programme specialist with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), including work on fostering the Free and Open Source movement in the Asia-Pacific.
