OFA Symposium 2025: Open Technology Impact in Uncertain Times

Astor Nummelin Carlberg is OFE’s Executive Director, responsible for the overall vision, activities of the organisation and policy development. He has extensive experience of European policy making processes, communications and network-building. Astor leads conversations on Europe’s digital challenges and the role of open technologies in achieving its full potential. He sits on the board of APELL, the European Open Source Business Association. Prior to OFE, Astor worked in the European Parliament and he was educated at Middlebury College, the Free University of Berlin and Solvay Business School.

I am Dr. Felipe Schmidt Fonseca, an experienced Berlin-based Brazilian advocate for social-environmental innovation and free/open-source technologies turned researcher. I am the founder of Reuse City studio and a co-creator of semente, a toolkit for community projects; as well as the co-founder and lead articulator of the Tropixel network; and an active member of organisations such as GIG and Circular Berlin.

Between 2019 and 2022, I was a Marie Curie Early Stage Research Fellow (Northumbria University / Mozilla Foundation). I have recently engaged in collaborations such as ID21, fonte.wiki, ALGO-BR, and CODE.

I have a PhD in Design from Northumbria University (Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK). The title of my thesis successfully defended in September 2023 is "Generous cities – weaving commons-oriented systems for the reuse of excess materials in urban contexts". Before that, I got an MA in Scientific and Cultural Dissemination from Labjor at the University of Campinas (UNICAMP) in Brazil, acquired with a dissertation about networked experimental labs.

Nicholas (Nick‘) Gates is a Senior Policy Advisor at OpenForum Europe (OFE), where he works on research and advocacy related to open source software and other open technologies. Nick leads the organisation’s research efforts, including the OpenForum Academy (OFA) Symposium, its annual research conference. He also leads OFE’s advocacy work on the NGI Commons and European Open Source Academy initiatives, which are focused on digital commons and public recognition of open source in Europe.

Nick’s expertise is in open source in the public sector, open source for social good, and the funding and sustainability of the open source ecosystem. His background is in digital government policy and research, particularly on open source but also public financial management, and digital service delivery. He enjoys supporting development partners, governments, and international organisations to deliver on their agendas through applied policymaking and research.

Before joining OFE, Nick helped launch ODI Global’s Digital Public Finance Hub, a new learning initiative around the digital transformation of public finance, as a consultant at Public Digital. He began his career working on research, policy, and advocacy at the Digital Impact Alliance — conducting research on topics including national digital transformation processes, open source in government, and digital transformation policy — and was a Fellow at the Portulans Institute.

Nick holds an undergraduate dual degree from the University of Massachusetts Lowell in Political Science and History, and graduated with an MSc in Global Development from the University of Copenhagen in 2018.

Jennifer is an independent legal consultant and PhD Candidate (International Law x Computer Science) at the University of Cambridge as a World Ramsay Scholar. She researches global governance of open-source software. An experienced Australian public international lawyer, she has advised on a broad range of matters at the intersection of technology, human rights and policy, including for public and private sectors. She has worked as Senior Legal Advisor to the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief, for leading international law firms and served on the International Law Association’s Global Board. Jennifer holds a LLM and BA/LLB (Hons.).

Richard Littauer is a PhD student in Computer Science at Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington in Pōneke, Aotearoa New Zealand. He is also one of the two organizers of CURIOSS, the community for university and research institution open source program offices, and he is an organizer for SustainOSS, and has recorded hundreds of podcasts on open source sustainability there. He has been interested and involved in open source communities for decades.

Gordon LaForge is a senior policy analyst at New America working on the geopolitics and governance of emerging technologies like AI, international institutions, and the future of democracy. He is also a visiting faculty member at Stanford University's Leadership Academy for Development and at Arizona State University's Thunderbird School of Global Management.

LaForge was previously senior researcher at Princeton University’s Innovations for Successful Societies program, where he wrote on institution-building in fragile states. He has been a freelance journalist in Southeast Asia, a researcher with the predictive analytics and geopolitical risk firm Predata Inc., and a graduate intern at the US Mission to NATO in Brussels working on nuclear policy planning in the Office of the Defense Advisor.

LaForge's analysis and reporting have appeared in Foreign Affairs, The New York Times, Foreign Policy, The Washington Quarterly, The Daily Beast, The Diplomat, and other publications. He is a Term Member of the Council on Foreign Relations and was awarded two Fulbright fellowships to Indonesia. He holds an MPA in international relations from Princeton University and a BA in literature from the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Nathalia Foditsch is Director of International Programs at Connect Humanity. She is a licensed attorney and an expert in technology and communications policy and regulatory issues, with over fifteen years experience.

She has worked for some of the main international organizations and think tanks in Washington D.C., which she has represented in countless official missions to numerous countries in the Latin America, Caribbean, and Europe.

More recently, Foditsch has served as a Senior Policy and Regulatory specialist for the Web Foundation’s Alliance for Affordable Internet. She is a research fellow at Cornell University’s Emerging Markets Institute (EMI), which is part of the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management.

Among other publications focused on technology and communications policy and regulation, Foditsch has co-edited and co-authored the book “Broadband in Brazil: Past, Present, Future”, which was a finalist of the 2017 “Jabuti Awards” (the main literary award in Brazil). She is an adjunct professor at the University Jose Cela (Spain); and holds a master’s in law (LLM) and a master’s in public policy (MPP) and is a member of the advisory board of the Brazil-U.S. Legal and Judicial Studies Program at the Washington College of Law (WCL).

She is fluent in Portuguese, English, Spanish, and German.

Andrew Wichmann is a :Senior Intellectual Property and Licensing Manager, Digital Technology at Johns Hopkins University, based in Baltimore, Maryland. By training, he is patent lawyer working to promote ethical innovation and ethical expression in digital technology and open innovation.