* Digital Asia Hub Appoints Malavika Jayaram Inaugural Executive Director The Digital Asia Hub <http://www.digitalasiahub.org/>and its collaborators are excited to announce the appointment of Malavika Jayaram as the Hub’s inaugural Executive Director. Jayaram, a technology lawyer and a Fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, brings to the Hub years of experience as an Internet and society scholar and practitioner who has worked and lived on three continents. As Executive Director, Malavika Jayaram will work closely with a distinguished Board and Steering Committee to build capacity and identity for the Hong Kong-based Hub, defining its position and shaping its direction in the coming months and years. In addition to managing the day-to-day operations of the Hub, Jayaram will build and manage the Hub’s core team, cultivate relationships with sponsoring organizations, promote the Hub, and collaborate with friends and colleagues in the larger Digital Asia network and beyond. “Malavikais the ideal candidate for the Executive Director position. She has an exceptional international profile with a strong network in the region,” said Urs Gasser, Executive Director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, which helped to incubate the Digital A sia Hub. “In addition to her remarkable academic track record and professional experience, Malavika has a wonderful ability to build bridges and trust across cultures and communities.” "I look forward to working with Malavika. She has a great, eclectic background and will make an excellent Executive Director for the Hub,” said Chinmayi Arun, Research Director of the Centre for Communication Governance at National Law University Delhi and a member of the Hub’s Board of Directors. “Her deep connection with South Asia will help her focus on the region and its priorities, and the Hub will benefit tremendously from her global networks and her strong relationship with the Berkman Center and researchers from the Network of Internet & Society Centers." “The Digital Asia Hub is lucky to have Malavika as its leader: at a time when Internet freedom is under siege everywhere, Malavika has the special combination of strength, sensitivity, and smarts to not only enable active and inclusive research that will help us understand what's going on, but I will also turn to her for ideas and actions on what direction we should be taking the Internet towards,” said Lokman Tsui, Assistant Professor at the School of Journalism and Communication of the Chinese University of Hong Kong and a member of the Hub’s Steering Committee. Before her appointment as Executive Director, Malavika Jayaram spent two years as a Fellow at the Berkman Center, and eight years in London with the global law firm Allen & Overy in the Communications, Media & Technology group and as Vice President and Technology Counsel at Citigroup. While a partner at Jayaram & Jayaram in India, she was one of 10 Indian lawyers selected for The International Who's Who of Internet e-Commerce & Data Protection Lawyers directory for 2012 and 2013. In August 2013, she was voted one of India’s leading lawyers - one of only 8 women to be featured in the “40 under 45” survey conducted by Law Business Research, London. A graduate of the National Law School of India, Jayaram has an LL.M. from Northwestern University, Chicago, and is working towards a PhD in law. She taught India’s first course on information technology and law in 1997, and sits on the advisory board of the Indian Journal of Law & Technology. She has been a Fellow with the Centre for Internet & Society, India, since 2009 where she helped start their privacy program. During 2012-2013, she was a Visiting Scholar at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania, within the Center for Global Communication Studies. More recently, she has had visiting fellowships at the University of Sydney and the Institute for Technology & Society, Rio de Janeiro. She is curren tly Adjunct Faculty at Northwestern University School of Law as part of the new Master of Science in Law program bridging STEM subjects and the law. About the Digital Asia Hub The Digital Asia Hub <http://www.digitalasiahub.org/>is an independent, non-profit Internet and society research think tank based in Hong Kong, led by an Executive Director, Management Board, and Steering Committee. Its funding is provided through individual, institutional and corporate donations. Incubated by The Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University <https://cyber.law.harvard.edu/>and a diverse group of academic, civil society, and private sector partners, the Hub provides a non-partisan, open, and collaborative platform for research, knowledge sharing and capacity building related to Internet and society issues with a focus on digital Asia. The Hub also aims to strengthen effective multi-stakeholder discourse, with both local and regional activities, and will contribute to – and itself ser ve as a n ode of – a larger network of academic organizations: the Global Network of Internet & Society Centers <http://networkofcenters.net/>(the “NoC”). * -- Lorenzo Canova Nexa Center for Internet & Society Politecnico di Torino - DAUIN http://nexa.polito.it Project Manager Global Network of Internet & Society Research Centers http://networkofcenters.net/