Team
We are journalists, academics, techies, and business people who work together to
amplify the impact of the global grassroots human rights community.
Isabel Gahren – Co-Founder
Isabel is the project lead of the DHRLab. Her areas
of expertise are ICT4X, New Work, and Systems Thinking. She currently works at
betterplace-lab, the Think-and-Do-Tank of betterplace.org. She is Co-Founder and
Board Member of Future Challenges e.V., a certified Warm Data Lab Host by the
International Bateson Institute and a certified Facilitator of Transformation.
Eike Leonhardt – Co-Founder
Eike has a background in political science, business and digital technology and
works at the intersection of the three for over 15 years. His experience includes
gigs at consulting firms, digital agencies, academic institutions and freelance
work, amongst others. Eike is Co-founder as well as board member of Future
Challenges and works on the strategic aspects of what we do.
Linda Walter – Co-Founder
Linda has a background in philosophy, political science and human rights work and
explores the intersection of human rights and digital transformation from an
academic and civil society perspective for over ten years. Linda is Co-Founder as
well as board member of Future Challenges and is in charge of running the
organization as our MD.
Mario Wiedemann – Co-Founder
Mario is a political scientist who has been working on the intersection of the
Internet and societal developments for ten years. He started to grow
futurechallenges’ worldwide blogger community ten years ago. Mario appreciates the
various domains in which the Internet has promoted open content and he has worked
for several years on open educational resources and on open data. He is working as
a project manager for the Bertelsmann Stiftung.
Dr. Ole Wintermann – Co-Founder
Ole is an economist and social scientist and has worked at the Bertelsmann
Stiftung for many years. It was there that the idea for Futurechallenes.org was
born. He has been working for years on issues of human rights, the open Internet,
Open Science and Creative Commons. Currently, he is concerned with the question of
how digitalization can be used to achieve more sustainability in business.
Tobi Adeleke – Project Lead DHRLab
Oluwatobiloba, called Tobi, is a social scientist with over five years of
experience in civil society and academia. Her expertise lies in topics at the
intersection of digital transformation and society, including human rights.
Oluwatobiloba graduated from the Global Studies Programme at the Humboldt
University of Berlin and is also a PhD student at the same university where she is
completing her research on the intersectionality of social inequalities.
Isabelle Adam - Project Manager
Isabelle’s background lies in public policy, research, and project management with
a focus on the use of digital tools in human rights work. She graduated in Global
Public Policy at Central European University in Budapest and has worked in NGOs
abroad in countries such as Uganda, Madagascar and Bolivia. Isabelle manages
several CoPs and projects for the Digital Human Rights Lab.
Luca Taugner - Student Assistant
Luca studies political science and sociology at the Humboldt University Berlin.
His main fields of interest are social theory and questions of international
justice. Since 2018 he has been working for non-governmental organisations in the
field of international cooperation. Luca is our student assistant for the Digital
Human Rights Lab.
Larissa Zappe - Project Manager
To meet the challenges of the 21st century, changes on the economical, ecological
and social level are inevitable. As those challenges are deeply intertwined,
Larissa combined different disciplines in her studies and graduated from
Sustainability, Geography and Business Administration. Working at the intersection
of tech and communication in the DHRLab, she is part of the communications team
and in frequent contact with the developers and the DHRLab community.