Speaker Biographies

Confirmed speakers

Robert Madelin

Director General, DG CONNECT, European Commission

Robert Madelin became Director-General for the DG Communications Networks, Content & Technology (formerly Information Society and Media) at the European Commission in April 2010.

Robert was educated in England at the Royal Grammar School, High Wycombe and at Magdalen College, Oxford. He has also studied at the Ecole Nationale d’Administration in Paris.

Born in 1957, a British civil servant since 1979, Robert has served in the Commission since 1993: as Director General for Health and Consumer Policies from 2004 to 2010, as a Director in DG Trade, and in the Cabinet of Sir Leon (now Lord) Brittan, European Commission Vice-President.

Ambassador Sylvia Poll

Deputy Permanent Representative, Permanent Mission of Costa Rica to the United Nations Office at Geneva, ITU

Sylvia Poll is currently the Ambassador, Deputy Permanent Representative of the Permanent Mission of Costa Rica to the United Nations Office in Geneva and other International Organizations in Switzerland. Prior to her current position she was the Regional Manager of Executive Programs at the Incae Business School where she worked with the private sector, governments and NGOs across Latin America for over five years.

Jacqueline Beauchere

Chief Online Safety Officer, Microsoft

Jacqueline F. Beauchere is the Chief Online Safety Officer for Microsoft Corp. In this role, Ms. Beauchere is responsible for all aspects of Microsoft’s online safety strategy, including cross-company policy creation and implementation, influence over consumer safety features and functionality, and communications to and engagement with a variety of external audiences. She also currently serves as the vice chair for the National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA) Board of Directors.

Ms. Beauchere has spent almost 14 years at Microsoft leading various groups and efforts that evangelize the company's commitment to help create a safer, more trusted Internet experience for people of all ages and abilities.

Before joining Microsoft in December 1999, Ms. Beauchere was an attorney in private practice in New Jersey, New York, and Washington, D.C. A second-career lawyer, she spent 12 years as a real-time financial news correspondent and Editor in Charge, most recently with Reuters America, Inc., in New York.

She is a cum laude graduate of Seton Hall University School of Law in Newark, N.J., and holds a dual BA in international relations and journalism from The American University in Washington, D.C.

John Carr OBE

Secretary of UK Children's Charity Commission & Board Member, UKCCIS

John Carr writes and consults about internet safety and security. He is one of the world’s leading authorities on children's and young people’s use of the internet and associated new technologies. Based in London John works extensively across the UK and in many parts of the world. More recently John has also been working around issues of digital inclusion, particularly around older people's and grandparents' use of technology.

John has been a Senior Expert Adviser to the United Nations (International Telecommunication Union), an Expert Adviser to the European Union, the European Network and Information Security Agency, and consultant to the Oak Foundation, Geneva. In June, 2012, John was confirmed as a Senior Visiting Fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

At different times John has been engaged professionally to advise or assist several, major global high tech companies including Newscorp, Fox Interactive Media (owners of MySpace) where he was a Vice President and later a consultant, Yahoo UK & Ireland, Google, Phorm (UK), Vodafone and 02. John is a Director of NetID Me Ltd., a company which has developed an innovative online identity authentication product.

John regularly contributes to TV and radio programmes on the subject of online safety and security. He writes a column for the Huffington Post UK. John was also formerly the internet columnist for Prospect magazine and has written about the internet for The Observer, The Times, The Daily Telegraph, New Statesman, The Guardian and many other journals, both in the UK and overseas.

In June, 2010, John was honoured by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II with an OBE. In November, 2011, John received an award for "Outstanding Achievement" in the field of online child safety from the Washington DC based Family Online Safety Institute. John was nominated by Microsoft. In 2006, he was named by the New Statesman as one of 50 global “Modern Heroes”. In 2003 John was also named by New Media Age as one of the UK’s 50 most influential people in the new media industries.

John’s publications include “The Role of the Internet In the Commission of Crime”, “Out of Sight, Out of Mind - global responses to dealing with online child pornographic images” and, in June 2009, he jointly authored “The Digital Manifesto”.

Pro bono John is a Director of the charity Horsesmouth (see http://www.horsesmouth.co.uk/) an online mentoring social network and is a member of the Technical Advisory Committee of Breakthough Breast Cancer. Along the way John was also a Founding Trustee of DEMOS, one of the UK’s leading independent Think Tanks.

Within the UK John is a member of the Executive Board of the UK Council for Child Internet Safety (UKCCIS). UKCCIS is co-chaired by two Government Ministers, one from Education and one from the Home Office. He has also acted as a consultant to the Office of the Children's Commissioner for England. John is a member of the British Board of Film Classification's Advisory Panel on Children's Viewing. He was also a Director of the Internet Watch Foundation, the UK's hotline.

John is a former member of Microsoft’s Policy Advisory Board for Europe, the Middle East and Africa. He is on the Advisory Council of the Family Online Safety Institute in Washington DC, USA, and Beyond Borders, Canada.

Fred Langford

Director of Global Operations and Deputy CEO, Internet Watch Foundation

Fred joined the IWF in December 2004 and is currently the Director of Global Operations and Deputy CEO. It aims to provide global citizens, particularly in countries with a growing internet network, a way of reporting child sexual abuse material which is then assessed by expert analysts at the IWF Hotline in the UK. He is also responsible for other international aspects of the IWF, the Hotline, technology, information security and IWF services.

Since 2004, Fred has led various technical discussions for the IWF with Members, governments and law enforcement about subjects including the IWF URL list, self-certification process, splash page implementation and advised on encryption and anonymous technologies.

Fred is a member of the Commonwealth Cybercrime Initiative Steering Group and the ITU Child Online Protection Working Group. He also a Director of the UK Safer Internet Centre (UKSIC).

Prior to joining the IWF, Fred has worked for the Ministry of Defence, Tier 1 ISPs and other organisations in a technical and consultancy capacity. His technical knowledge is primarily in networks and infrastructure architecture. He has worked on projects for the Home Office, Ministry of Justice and the Crown Prosecution Service including consultations on Pan-European definitions of Child Sexual Abuse Material and UK consultations on Extreme Adult Material. Fred is also CISSP accredited.

Erik Windmar

Member of Cabinet of EU Commissioner for Home Affairs, Cecilia Malmström, European Commission

Erik Windmar is a member of the cabinet of Cecilia Malmström, EU Commissioner for Home Affairs. He has had several posts in the Swedish Administration, among those in the Prime Minister's Office and in the Ministry of Defence where he served as a political advisor to the Minister of Defence. He has also been posted in Geneva working as a Co-Director of the European Training Course at the Geneva Centre for Security Policy.

Sabine Verheyen

Member, European Parliament

Sabine Verheyen has been a MEP for the German Christian Democrats (CDU) since 2009. She is a member of the European Parliament's culture and education committee and a substitute on the internal market and consumer protection committee, where she focuses in particular on media policy, intellectual property and digital issues.
She took part in the conciliation committee on the telecom package and has been a member of the European Parliament's annual delegation to the Internet Governance Forum since 2009.
From 1999 to 2009 she was mayor of Aachen. She has been a member of the Euregio Council since 1999 and a member of the council of WDR, the West German public broadcaster, since 2003 and is a substitute member since 2009. She is furthermore a member of the European Internet Foundation.

Sabine studied architecture at FH Aachen University of Applied Sciences.

Tommaso Bertolotti

PhD candidate in Philosophy at the Department of Humanities, University of Pavia

Tommaso Bertolotti is a PhD candidate in Philosophy at the Department of Humanities, University of Pavia (supervisor: professor Lorenzo Magnani) and a member of the Computational Philosophy Laboratory at the same university. He graduated with a dissertation concerning the abductive origin of belief in supernatural agents (2010). His PhD research project analyzed the strategic dimension of human rationality in science, religion and social cognition. He authored and co-authored several articles about the inferential patterns regulating religious thinking, the nature and use of models in science with respect to other rational domains, the intuitive modeling of biological phenomena persisting in human environments (e.g. camouflage), and the ethics of technology. As for the latter, his research interests focus on how long-inherited features of human cognition, namely the propensity towards gossip and violence, or religiosity, react and develop when faced with a radically new environment such as the cybernetic one. In 2012 he was invited to a European Commission expert workshop aimed at providing guidelines to policies dealing with “Social Networks and Cyber-bullying”. The defense of his PhD thesis is estimated to take place at the beginning of 2014.

Bojana Lobe

Assistant Professor University of Ljubljana and representative, EU Kids Online Network

Bojana Lobe is an assistant professor at the Faculty of Social Sciences, member of International Journal of Multiple Research Approaches editorial board and author of the book Integration of Online Research Methods. Current research interests include mixed methods research, new technologies in social science data collection, systematic comparative methods and methodological aspects of researching children's experiences.

Sarah Taylor

Head of Creative Economy, Internet and International, UK Department for Culture, Media and Sport

Unfortunately, Ms Taylor's biography is not available

Jean-Charles Schweitzer

Senior Specialist Child Sexual Exploitation Team, European Cyber Crime Centre

Mr. Jean-Charles Schweitzer, Senior Specialist Child Sexual Exploitation team at European Cybercrime Centre (EC3).

Mr. Schweitzer is currently a Senior Specialist with the European Cyber Crime Centre (EC3), Child Exploitation Team. He is a member of the Focal Point Twins supporting EU Member States and Third Parties in combating the sexual exploitation of children.

Prior to his secondment to Europol he occupied various positions with a focus on criminal investigation and international police cooperation.

He is qualified in Criminal Intelligence Analysis and Digital Forensics and holds a Master of Science in Forensic Computing and Cybercrime Investigations form the University College of Dublin. He delivers training on both criminal intelligence analysis and online investigation techniques.

Erik Barnett

Attaché to the European Union for the US ICE, US Department of Homeland Security

Erik Barnett is the Attaché to the European Union for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the second largest federal law enforcement agency in the United States. Mr. Barnett’s responsibilities include policy and operational guidance on child exploitation, counter-proliferation, intellectual property theft enforcement, human rights violations and war crimes, narcotics trafficking, money laundering, and transnational criminal enterprises. Mr. Barnett is also the senior advisor to the Director of ICE for the National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center.
Mr. Barnett previously served as an Assistant Deputy Director of ICE, with specific responsibility for the Customs portfolio.
Prior to joining ICE, Mr. Barnett was a federal prosecutor for eight years with the U.S. Department of Justice, where he handled cases involving transnational crime, public corruption, and violent offenses among others. Mr. Barnett received a Director’s Award for Superior Performance as an Assistant U.S. Attorney.
In 2007, Mr. Barnett was appointed by the Deputy Attorney General of the United States to serve as a legislative fellow for the Judiciary Committee of the United States Senate. Mr. Barnett was subsequently appointed by the Assistant Attorney General as a Deputy Chief in the Department of Justice’s Criminal Division, working on international criminal matters.
From 1995 – 2002, Mr. Barnett was a state prosecutor and before his career as a prosecutor, he worked for two members of the United States House of Representatives.
From 2003 – 2008, Mr. Barnett was an adjunct professor at The George Washington University Law School and at Georgetown University’s law school from 2008 until 2011. Mr. Barnett graduated from California Western School of Law in 1993. He has taught college level courses on criminal justice matters since 2004.
His offices are a part of the U.S. Mission to the European Union.

Manuela Martra

Project Officer, Inclusion, Skills and Youth, DG Connect, European Commission

Manuela Martra is a member of the "BIK" team in the Unit Inclusion, skills, youth of DG Communications Networks Content and Technology of the European Commission. She is trying her best to provide a better internet for kids through the Safer Internet Programme & the European Strategy for a Better Internet for Children.

Throughout her professional life, both at the Commission and outside, Manuela has been dealing with European networks, bringing together stakeholders from all Member States to exchange and share experiences and best practices and to discuss common topics and strategies at European level.

The current networks she is managing as EC Project Officer are INSAFE, which brings together Safer Internet Centres from 30 European countries to promote a safe and responsible use of online technologies by young people and POSCON which gathers European experts in the field of best content for kids.

Lucy Woodward

Interactive Live Services Director of Disney Interactive, The Walt Disney Company EMEA

Lucy Woodward is the Interactive Live Services Director for The Walt Disney Company EMEA and is responsible for the day to day operations of Club Penguin across Europe, Middle East and Africa. Since taking on the role in 2009, Lucy has made a significant contribution to the management and development of Club Penguin, one of the world’s largest and fastest growing virtual worlds for children.

Lucy has played an integral role in the success of Club Penguin across the region, spearheading growth with the launch of Club Penguin in Germany. In addition, under her tenure, Club Penguin has expanded its portfolio of consumer products to include items such as apparel, mobile apps, sticker album and plush as well as the Club Penguin Magazine in the UK. With player safety at the heart of everything the team delivers, Lucy has also built strong partnerships with internet safety providers Childnet, CEOP and the Safer Internet Centre to ensure her moderation teams receive best in class training and continue to deliver against safety procedures and protocols of exceptional industry standard.

Prior to her role at Club Penguin Lucy worked for Unilever before joining The Walt Disney Company as a Brand Manager for Home Entertainment in 2001.

Lucy is also a mum to two young children and is passionate about Club Penguin’s community engagement, uniting kids from all over the world together in a fun, creative and safety-focused environment.

Club Penguin now has more than 175 million registered users playing in over 190 countries and in five languages: English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and German.

Jon Brown

Executive Board Member, eNACSO

Jon is a qualified Social Worker with a Masters in Social Policy from the LSE. During his career as a Probation Officer and Social Worker he has been responsible for setting up and managing a range of sexual abuse services ranging from therapeutic services for child victims, services for children and young people with sexually harmful behaviour and services for adult sex offenders.
Between 2003-07 Jon was Chair of NOTA, the National Organisation for the Treatment of Abusers (www.nota.co.uk) and remains on the National Executive Committee. He is also a Trustee of the Loudoun Trust which exists to promote evidence based research and practice in the field of sexual aggression against children, and he is a Board member of eNACSO (www.enacso.eu)
Prior to taking up this role with the NSPCC Jon was Operational Director of Children’s Services with Action for Children. Since April 2010 he has been in post as Head of Strategy and Development with the NSPCC helping to take forward the new organisational strategy in relation to sexual abuse. Jon is responsible for the design and commissioning of service, policy and research development. In January 2012 he also took responsibility for leading the NSPCCs work with disabled children.
Jon Brown is a Member of the Executive Board of the European NGO Alliance for Child Safety Online since 2012.

David Miles

Director – Europe, Middle East & Africa, Family Online Safety Institute

For the past 30 years, David has had a wide range of leadership roles in the technology and telecommunications sector including IBM, Compaq and Motorola. He is currently FOSI's Director for Europe, Middle East and Africa. FOSI is an international non-profit organisation which works to make the online safer for kids and their families. FOSI convenes leaders in industry, government and the non-profit sectors to collaborate and innovate new solutions and policies in the field of online safety. Through research, resources, events and special projects, FOSI promotes a culture of responsibility online and encourages a sense of digital citizenship for all.

David is a member of the Executive Board of the UK Council for Child Internet Safety (UKCCIS) the United Nations ITU Child Online Protection (COP) Working Council, the European Commission's ICT Principles Coalition Stakeholder Group and involved in a number of broader International initiatives related to online safety.

David is a history graduate from the University of Kent at Canterbury and has a Diploma in Marketing from the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM).

Thibaut Kleiner

Advisor to Vice-President Kroes, European Commission

Thibaut Kleiner is Advisor to Vice-President Neelie Kroes, where he is in charge of Internet policies at large (Net futures, Internet of Things, Cloud Computing, Startup Europe, Media & Data, Better Internet for Children, Internet Governance, Cybersecurity, e-ID, Data protection and e-privacy). He has worked for the European Commission since 2001, occupying a number of positions, notably in the field of competition policy, where he was head of unit in charge of coordination, and member of Cabinet of Neelie Kroes in her previous mandate, where he notably supervised state aid (including during the banking crisis). An economist by training, he holds a Master from HEC Paris and a PhD from the London School of Economics.

Alessandro Cagli

Chairman, Advertising Education forum

Since 2004, Alessandro Cagli is Director of European Public Affairs for the Ferrero Group and is based in Brussels. His tasks include definition, coordination and advocacy of the company positions towards the European Union, the World Health Organisation, EU National Governments, EU Trade Associations, NGOs and Media.

He is also:
• Chairman of the Advertising Education Forum (www.aeforum.org)
• Member of the Executive Committee of the World Federation of Advertisers (www.wfanet.org)
• Vice President of the European Association of Chocolate, Biscuit & Confectionery Industries (www.caobisco.com)
• Member of the “Board Sherpas” of the European Federation of the Food & Drink Industries (http://www.fooddrinkeurope.eu/ )
• Member of the Board of Directors of the European Food Information Council (www.eufic.org)

Previously (1995-2003), he was Attaché for Industry and Consumer Affairs at the Permanent Representation of Italy to the EU in Brussels.

Uwe Manuel Rasmussen

Legal Counsel, Microsoft

Uwe Manuel Rasmussen is an attorney in the IP/IT department of the Paris-based law firm August & Debouzy where he manages cases in the areas of copyright, database rights, personal data protection, and compliance. Since 2006 he has worked on secondment with Microsoft's Digital Crimes Unit to work on cyber crime enforcement and cooperation initiatives. Mr Rasmussen holds law degrees from Sorbonne in Paris and Copenhagen University and has studied IP law at Santa Clara University and is moreover a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer. He speaks Danish, Dutch, English, French, German and Spanish.