APC's governance structure consists of a board of directors that is elected by its network members as well as a council of representatives of member organisations. All APC’s organisational powers are exercised by the board, with certain powers reserved specifically for the council. The board makes policy and management decisions and works with the executive director and staff to implement the strategic priorities decided by members.
The board is formed every three years, when council elects between four and eight directors from among its members (excluding APC’s executive director, who is automatically appointed). The board usually appoints a chair, vice chair, secretary and treasurer. The most recent election was held online in April 2024.
To the maximum extent possible, APC ensures that the board represents a diverse set of experiences, backgrounds and characteristics. The board is composed to try to ensure a wide range of views, skills, experiences and professional and sector knowledge necessary to meet the organisation’s strategic objectives. APC also emphasises regional diversity and gender balance, whenever possible, as well as continuity and renewal.
Here is APC’s new board of directors:
- Leandro Navarro, Spain (chair)
- Sylvie Siyam, Cameroon (vice chair)
- Poncelet Ileleji, The Gambia (secretary)
- Neema Iyer, Uganda (treasurer)
- Pavel Antonov, Bulgaria
- Michel Lambert, Canada
- TB Dinesh, India
- Chat Garcia Ramilo, Philippines (APC executive director)
The new board members met at the APC Community Gathering in Chiang Mai, Thailand in May 2024 and we took the opportunity to interview them about what they are looking forward to as well as the challenges they anticipate in coming years.
Leandro Navarro
Chair
Leandro Navarro co-founded Pangea, a Barcelona-based non-profit organisation dedicated to promoting the strategic use of communication networks and ICTs for development and social justice, in 1993. He is now Pangea’s vice president and a member of its advisory board. Navarro is also co-founder of eReuse.org, a circular economy initiative for the reuse and traceability of digital devices. A PhD in telecommunications, he is a professor in the department of computer architecture at Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC).
Sylvie Siyam
Vice chair
Sylvie Siyam is president and co-founder of Cameroon-based PROTEGE QV, a non-governmental organisation that since 1995 has undertaken initiatives to promote rural development, protect the environment and improve the well-being of communities. Siyam is an expert in decentralisation and local development who has participated in or led development projects and held several positions of responsibility in the Cameroonian administration and at the Special Fund for Equipment and Intermunicipal Intervention (FEICOM). An electromechanical engineer, Siyam is very focused on the promotion of female leadership, renewable energies and urban agriculture.
Poncelet Ileleji
Secretary
Poncelet Ileleji, founder and CEO of Jokkolabs Banjul, has been involved with the use of ICTs as a tool for sustainable development in The Gambia. A computer scientist, Ileliji is on the board of the Jokkolabs global network. He served as country coordinator for the World Links project in The Gambia from 2001 to 2005. The programme adopted a constructivist approach to teaching with ICTs that emphasised a shift away from lecture-based instruction towards student-centred, project-based learning. He has been an International Coordinator for the International YMCA of New York’s International Camp Counsellor Program. He has worked as a consultant for several projects in Africa focused on digital rights and inclusion, ICT for development, digital technologies and education, internet governance and health informatics.
Neema Iyer
Treasurer
Neema Iyer is a digital artist, technologist and coach working globally and living in Sydney. Iyer is an epidemiologist by training. She has worked on a number of large-scale research initiatives and managed several multi-country, multistakeholder projects, across the world, with a majority focused on the African continent. She is the founder of Pollicy, an award-winning feminist collective based out of Kampala, Uganda working on data and digital rights and inclusion. She currently serves on Meta’s Global Women’s Safety Advisory Board. She was also recently a Practitioner Fellow at Stanford’s Digital Civil Society Lab and Senior Fellow in Trustworthy AI at Mozilla Foundation. She was also on the 2021 Quartz Africa Innovators list. She supports women entrepreneurs through creative leadership to build joyful and resilient businesses.
Pavel Antonov
Pavel Antonov is co-founder and executive editor of BlueLink, a virtual network offering a variety of internet-based services for anyone interested in issues related to the environment, natural resources and sustainable development in Bulgaria. A former chief editor of current affairs at Bulgaria’s Nova TV, he has led training courses for journalists and e-networking activists across Eastern Europe. Affiliated with the Open Space Research Centre, UK, his recent research includes countering tobacco industry interference with public health policy as well as civil society’s role against cross-border corruption. He is the Civil Society Advisor to the Minister of Environment and Waters as well as a member of the Civic Council to the Parliament’s Committee on Digitalisation in Bulgaria.
TB Dinesh
TB Dinesh is a community media activist with a background in computer science. For over two decades, he has been part of Janastu and Servelots in India. Janastu is a non-profit that has provided free and open-source software solutions and support to small not-for-profit and non-governmental organisations since 2002. The focus now is on storytelling methods and encouraging people from communities marginalised by “literates”, especially women, to tell their own stories. Towards this goal, he has been part of initiatives like IruWay, a rural research lab; Anthillhacks, location-celebrating inclusive camps; Renarration Web, an annotations-driven social semantic web; and CrafterSpace, a crafts and maker space for women and youth.
Michel Lambert
General manager at eQualitie, a Canadian organisation whose mission is the development of open source technologies to protect online rights, Michel Lambert is engaged in various initiatives that support civil society’s rights to engage securely over the internet. He has launched several projects using technologies, including the Quebec Centre for Alternative Media and initiatives in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Maghreb/Mashreq and Tunis. More recently, he contributed to launching the LabDelta initiative and was a founding member of the Canadian Internet Governance Forum. He has also contributed to several GISWatch issues for APC. Active on issues of international solidarity, he has been deeply involved with a wide range of Quebec and Canadian coalitions.
Chat Garcia Ramilo
APC executive director
Chat Garcia Ramilo has worked as a gender and ICT consultant for the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), the World Bank, UNIFEM, UNESCAP and the United Nations Division for the Advancement of Women. She first joined APC in 2000 and is an experienced manager, evaluator, resource person and speaker on gender and ICTs. She was manager of APC’s Women’s Rights Programme (APC WRP) from 2005 to 2012 and became the organisation’s executive director in 2017. She is also the board chair of the Center for Migrant Advocacy in the Philippines.