About the coalition
The Green Screen Climate Justice and Digital Rights Coalition is a group of funders and practitioners looking to build bridges across the digital rights and climate justice movements. The aim of the coalition is to be a catalyst in making visible the climate implications of technology by supporting emerging on-the-ground work, building networks, and embedding the issue as an area within philanthropy.
Coalition Members
Meet the people who have been working behind the scenes to organise and build the coalition.
Fieke Jansen
Green Screen Coalition Co-Lead
Fieke is a co-principle investigator of the critical infrastructure lab and a postdoc researcher at the University of Amsterdam. Her research interests are to understand power and conflict around the environmental impact of expanding infrastructures. She is also the co-lead of the Green Screen Climate Justice and Digital Rights coalition.
Maya Richman
Green Screen Coalition Co-Lead
Maya is a jack-of-all trades who has spent the last ten years listening and learning about the plurality of struggles for technological justice across the world, and supporting activists and organizations to untangle technologies’ hold on our lives and reclaim its power to bring about social and political transformation. She has previously worked with The Engine Room and as a Mozilla Fellow (2018 - 2019) with Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice.
Yan Cong
Program Officer
Yan is program officer of the Catalyst Fund. She's also a PhD student working on the topic of Environmental Justice and Generative AI at Erasmus University under the Feminist Generative AI Lab.
Michelle Thorne
Coalition Member
Michelle is the Director of Strategy and Partnerships at the Green Web Foundation and a co-initiator of the Green Screen Coalition. Previously, she worked for 13 years at the Mozilla Foundation most recently in the role of Sustainable Internet Lead. She also publishes Branch Magazine and co-organizes Open Climate.
Lea Wulf
Coalition Member
Lea Wulf is a project manager in the Center for Digital Society at Stiftung Mercator, where she explores the intersection of digital transformation and climate action as a field of action for the foundation. Previously, she coordinated an AI network at a regional industry association in northern Germany. Lea studied Political Science, Communication and Media Studies at the Universities of Bremen and Helsinki and holds a master's degree in Political Management and Public Policy from the NRW School of Governance.
Maiko Nakagaki
Coalition Member
Maiko is a Senior Program Officer at the Internet Society (ISOC) Foundation. She has over a decade of global partnerships and strategic advisory experiences in the global digital and tech policy space. Currently at the ISOC Foundation, she is overlooking a portfolio of innovative projects globally to advance an open, globally-connected, secure, and trustworthy internet for everyone. She was previously with the Alliance for Affordable Internet (A4AI), as part of A4AI’s Leadership team, where she provided strategic decisions for the organization’s governance, programmatic, and business development efforts, and oversaw A4AI’s relationships with its 100+ global members and partners.
Renata Cuk
Coalition Member
Renata is the Director of Programmes at the Ariadne Network and a dedicated advocate for social justice, employing a systemic approach and storytelling to drive change. With over 15 years of experience in the human rights field, she is deeply committed to addressing inequalities, focusing specifically on intersectional gender and racial justice. Renata spent 11 years at the Open Society Foundations, where she worked on various issues and played a key role in developing the economic justice portfolio for Europe.She actively participated in donor collaboratives, including the ESGE Funders Alliance, where she was a member of the European Steering group.
Lisa Gutermuth
Coalition Member
Lisa is a program officer at Mozilla's Data Futures Lab, where her work focuses on creating a more equitable data economy. She has a master's degree in Agricultural Economics from Humboldt University in Berlin. She was also a visiting researcher at the Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society, in Berlin, and served on the jury of the German Prototype Fund from 2019-2021. Prior to working with Mozilla, Lisa was a senior program manager at Ranking Digital Rights, and a project coordinator with Tactical Technology Collective, where she focused on digital security, women's rights, and sustainability projects.
CJ Teraslinna
Coalition Member
CJ Teraslinna’s work as a technology strategist is rooted in driving systemic change, with a focus on redesigning extractive technology systems to better serve the public interest. They partner with organizations dedicated to laying the groundwork for repair, redefining existing narratives, and building toward equitable futures. CJ holds degrees in Social Policy & Data Analytics from the University of Pennsylvania and Information Systems from the University of Colorado.
Lori Regattieri
Strategic Advisor
Lori (they/she) is a public interest technologist working at the intersection of a just energy transition, territorial rights, and emerging technologies. As a consultant in the philanthropic and nonprofit sector, they facilitate cross-sector collaboration and strengthen South-South coalitions to advance climate justice. They work alongside movements advocating for Indigenous Peoples, Afro-descendants, and local communities (IPADLC) in the Global Majority to develop strategies for land rights, energy governance, and inclusive economies. Lori was previously a Senior Fellow in Trustworthy AI at the Mozilla Foundation. They hold a PhD in Communication and Culture from UFRJ. In 2024, they recieved the Jacques Ellul Award for Outstanding Media Ecology Activism from the Media Ecology Association.
Governance
Advisory Board and Founding Members
Michael Brennan
Advisory Board and Founding Member
Michael Brennan is an expert in technology and philanthropy strategy whose work spans civil society, academia, and the public sector. He co-founded initiatives such as the Spyware Accountability Initiative and the Digital Infrastructure Fund. Previously, Michael served as a Senior Program Officer at the Ford Foundation, overseeing a global grantmaking portfolio focused on technology & society. He holds a PhD in Computer Science from Drexel University.
Hanan Elmasu
Advisory Board and Founding Member
Hanan Elmasu has been working at the intersection of human rights, law and technology for over two decades, focused on building the strength of communities and exploring the potential of data and technology to both empower movements and address its harms. She has worked in a wide range of sectors and was previously Director of Fellowships and Awards at the Mozilla Foundation, and Programme Officer at the Oak Foundation’s International Human Rights Programme.
Julie Broome
Founding Member
Julie Broome is the Director of the Issues Affecting Women programme at Oak Foundation. She moved into this role after almost nine years as the Director of Ariadne, a network of European human rights and social change funders. She has over 25 years of experience in the non-profit and philanthropic sectors, with a particular focus on human rights and transitional justice. She served as Director of Programmes at the Sigrid Rausing Trust, and previously managed technical rule of law assistance programmes with the CEELI Institute in Prague and the American Bar Association’s Rule of Law Initiative.
Shayna Robinson
Founding Member
Shayna Robinson is a leader in philanthropy within the Internet governance space. As the Grant Program Director at ICANN, she oversees the distribution of proceeds from Auctions of Last Resort for new generic top-level domains. Previously, she led grantmaking efforts at the Internet Society Foundation, working to expand global Internet infrastructure, access, and connectivity. Shayna is currently pursuing a doctorate in Philanthropy at the Lilly School of Philanthropy at Indiana University, where her research focuses on Internet-based philanthropic models and distributed grantmaking.
Origin story
Learn more about how this work began and how it's evolved since.
From workshops to research
The Green Screen Coalition originated in 2020 as a collaborative exploration between a small group of funding institutions in the digital rights field who were interested in learning more about how they could make a positive impact on climate issues. The coalition members shared concerns about the escalating ecological and human rights impacts of the internet and digital technologies. Together we began to humbly explore what we digital rights funders needed to know about climate justice and how we might most effectively integrate these issues into our work.
“The internet is the world’s largest fossil-fuel powered machine, and as funders in the digital rights field, it’s our responsibility to assess and mitigate the internet’s harms not just to human rights, but also to the environment. Examples of harms that come to mind are carbon emissions, extractive industries, and environments and communities impacted with a lack of accountability.” - Michelle Thorne (Green Web Foundation)
As an initial step, the coalition commissioned research by The Engine Room, the Association for Progressive Communications, BSR, and the Open Environmental Data Project to explore different aspects of the intersection between digital rights and climate justice. This research mapped out some existing work as well as identifying areas for further exploration, research, and activism. It revealed that there is a nascent community of practitioners who are working towards sustainable and climate-supportive infrastructures, and investigating where the internet aligns with the climate and environmental justice movement—and where it works against them.
“This research will sit within a larger convening effort among funders and practitioners to develop shared understanding and strategies to grow our movements’ understanding of these issues, to invest more impactfully and take more effective action together.” - Julie Broome (Ariadne Network)
Our first event in Lille with hopes for the future from digital rights funders.
Seeding a community
On the basis of this initial exploration, it was clear that, in order to play a truly galvanising role at this intersection, the coalition would need to expand beyond digital rights funders and bring in a wider community of actors from both the digital rights and climate justice fields. While these convening efforts provided an opportunity to share the results of the research, the deeper aim was to put those developing work at this intersection at the centre of driving the evolution of the coalition’s work while building bridges between organisations, movements, and individuals from the two fields.
“We believe that digital rights and environmental justice networks are often siloed from each other, despite being inextricably linked. And so we need to set a grantmaking agenda that connects these issues today, rather than retrofitting the field years from now. That starts with understanding how we, as digital rights funders, can better approach climate and environmental justice.” - Michael Brennan (Ford Foundation)
As a response, coalition members organised a workshop in Berlin in October 2022. Distilled from the research, the conversations at the Berlin event were centered on the four deep dive tracks: policy and advocacy, climate mis- and disinformation, open practices, and standards and governance. The Berlin event was an important milestone in terms of generating momentum at this intersection, refining ideas for future research and action, and developing relationships between practitioners and activists bringing different perspectives to the work.
To act as a catalyst for new ideas, conversations and networks that are emerging at the nexus the Green Screen Coalition financially supported seven projects following the event. Together the awards encompass community building efforts, a stipend to collaboratively work on next steps, support hosting local events and translation of resources to bring the conversation back to the participants’ own communities.
Torch Ginger by Kira Simon-Kennedy (CC BY-NC 4.0)
Building new connections in Abya Yala (North and South America)
Expanding beyond conversations between US and European foundations, we organized a second gathering in Costa Rica in June 2023, immediately following RightsCon. The aims of this event included: nurturing the climate and digital rights funders and practitioners coalition that emerged in Berlin while bringing in new actors from the Americas; deepening understanding and creating an shared action agenda on six key themes; and engaging co-leadership on these topics. To learn more about the conversations that took place there, peruse the special edition of Branch magazine.
Our incredible facilitators for all the deep dives in Costa Rica.
Where from here?
With the launch of the Catalyst Fund, we are continuing to deepen and expand the network, building trust between various communities. We hope to invest in projects that will strengthen these ties and develop impactful agendas that identify the key issues, interrupt the harm(s), and build equitable and sustainable infrastructures— from social to ecological and digital. We will continue to share the outcomes of the work and how the coalition evolves. There is a lot of work to do, so let’s do it together!
Leaf cutter ants by Kira Simon-Kennedy (CC BY-NC 4.0)