Leadership

Cofounders

Board

MARA STRANDLUND

Mara Strandlund is a global expert on building teams that drive impact. Currently, she is serving as the Chief People Officer at Resilience, a company that is changing the way medicine is made. Inspired by PCI’s mission to help communities achieve their development goals, Mara joined the board in 2021. Drawing upon deep experience in Human Resources, Mara is committed to building an ecosystem of people, from all sectors, committed to solving global challenges. In recognition that a “people-centered” internet cannot exist without people, Mara serves as the backbone for the PCI volunteer network. She devises strategies to find, engage, and connect volunteers from around the world.

DIEGO MOLANO-VEGA

Diego Molano-Vega is the former Minister of Information Technologies and Communications of Colombia. He stewarded Colombia’s national technology plan, which was highlighted at the World Economic Forum in Davos, and has aided governments in more than 15 countries in designing technology policies. With a commitment to leveraging technology to reduce poverty, Molano-Vega joined PCI to work on a project looking at how financial technology ecosystems can empower communities. He views PCI as a bridge between Silicon Valley and the developing world, and is excited to harness the innovation and creativity of the network to build new solutions.

DR. LINTON WELLS II

Dr. Linton Wells II brings over 50 years of military, government, and academic experience focused on national security, technology, ethics, and global development to the PCI board. His contributions as a US Naval Officer and Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, under two administrations, shaped current national security frameworks for driving public-private cooperation for disaster relief. Lin’s expertise in resilience building has enabled him to lead PCI’s projects focused on building sustainable, digital ecosystems in Native American tribal communities and Puerto Rico. He’s excited to continue exploring how knowledge and technologies can be shared across sectors to build new solutions.

MEI LIN FUNG

Mei Lin is the current chair of People Centered Internet, where she is working on recruiting for the Global Help Desk (GHD) and the Echar Pa’lante initiative with Puerto Rico. She is also one of the co-founders of PCI (along with Vint Cerf), an organization created with the intention of ensuring that the internet is used as a positive force for good. In chairing PCI, Mei Lin is committed to establishing a “people centered” norm of technological development. This means increasing global access to technology while ensuring equality, protecting any vulnerable populations, and ultimately prioritizing human well-being. She is also a cofounder of the Impact Network and chairs the IEEE Industry Connections Social Impact Measurement group. She was also the socio technical lead for a four-year project for the US Dept. of Defense to look at the Future of Health, where she served as the subject matter expert for networked improvement communities and designed roundtables for government and community leaders to come together to devise the Healthy Community Collaboratives of America. Mei Lin is an MIT Sloan graduate, where she studied under two future Nobel Economics prize winners. Mei Lin was a finalist for 2018 Woman of the Year at the Silicon Valley Women in IT Awards organized by Information Age.

JUSTIN BRYANT

Justin is a recent graduate of Stanford Law School and current Operations Lead of People Centered Internet, where he is working on the Edgemoor Institute and Business Operations projects. He focuses on the intersection of law, policy, and technology in a global context and was selected as a Salzburg-Cutler Fellow in International Law and Public Service for his research on digital rights and data protection in Africa. He has worked at Microsoft in Beijing and San Francisco on projects concerning government affairs and technology and civic innovation and ALT Advisory in Johannesburg to build Data Protection Africa, a digital platform created to make data protection laws across Africa accessible. He has also worked at a Vault 50 law firm, the World Economic Forum Center for the 4th Industrial Revolution, and the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project. Justin holds a B.A. in Public Policy from Duke University, an MSc in Global Affairs from Tsinghua University—where he was a Schwarzman Scholar, an LL.M in European and International Business Law from the University of Vienna, and is a Certified Information Privacy Professional- Europe (CIPP-E).

CYNDI COON

Cyndi Coon serves on the board of People Centered Internet, where she co-created the Global Help Desk (GHD) scaffolding with Todd Hoskins of Canopy Gap. Cyndi is the CEO, and Founder of Laboratory5 Inc., where she builds human ecosystems to provide decision-makers in government agencies, military, higher education, and nonprofits with directions they need to take action; this is done by listening first and including everyone possible in the conversation.

Cyndi serves as the Chief of Staff at the Threatcasting Lab, Producer at ASURE Applied Futures Lab, Producing Director at the Weaponized Narrative Initiative, and a producer for the president's office at Arizona State University. Through these roles, she has engaged with multiple audiences across numerous mediums to create narratives for tools, training, and applied outcomes. She received her BFA in Fine Arts from Kendall College of Art and Design and her MFA from Arizona State University.

TAMARA SINGH

Tamara Singh is a strategic leader and certified coach who has worked around the world delivering transformation and growth initiatives, building successful international teams. In her work, she seeks to bring together financial systems and digital adoption to meet sustainability goals.

Tamara serves as Advisor to the Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum, a global think tank, and CarbonBlue Innovations. She received her MBA from INSEAD and was awarded undergraduate degrees by English Universities. She now resides in her native home of Singapore. She sees People as the Center of the Internet and hopes that her work with the PCI will bring the Internet to more people.

Executive Action Board

PCI projects require that a representative of the project join the PCI Executive Action Board, a mutual aid and advisory body to help PCI-affiliated projects learn from and support each other.