David Madden is an Australian entrepreneur associated with progressive causes. He is a co-founder of GetUp! a web-based political movement, and Avaaz, a global advocacy movement. He is passionate about rock climbing. In 2015, Madden founded Phandeeyar, a technology seed accelerator based in Yangon, Myanmar.
Madden grew up in Canberra and served as an Army officer before studying Arts and Law at the University of New South Wales in Sydney. Madden excelled in the law of the sea. Madden served as president of the University of New South Wales Student Guild. [1]
After winning the University Medal in History, Madden was awarded Fulbright and Frank Knox scholarships to study at Harvard Kennedy School at Harvard University, where he completed his master's degree in public policy. [1] [2] [3] He met Jeremy Heimans, with whom he later co-founded GetUp and Avaaz, waiting for a scholarship interview panel while studying at Harvard. [1] [3] [4] Madden and Heimans became involved in the Harvard Living Wage campaign in 2001, and Madden credits it as their first political collaboration. [1]
Madden has worked for the World Bank in Timor Leste, and for the United Nations in Indonesia. [5] He is the co-author of Imagining Australia: Ideas for Our Future (Allen & Unwin, 2004), with economist turned federal MP Andrew Leigh, Macgregor Duncan, and Peter Tynan. [6]
In 2004, Madden was one of the founders of Win Back Respect, a web-based campaign against the foreign policy of United States President George W. Bush. [7] The following year, together with Jeremy Heimans, he co-founded GetUp, a similar campaign against the recently re-elected Howard government in Australia, inspired by what he had seen with MoveOn in the United States. [8] [9] In 2006, Madden and Heimans were credited by the World E-Government Forum as being among the top 10 people involved in changing the world of the internet and politics. [1] He subsequently stepped back from the day-to-day operations of GetUp, but maintained a position on the organisation's board. [1] Madden and Heimans subsequently ran a political consultancy in the United States, before co-founding international campaigning outfit Avaaz. [3]
In the private sector, Madden is credited with the creation and marketing of TwitterPeek, the world's only mobile Twitter-only device. CNN named it as one of their top 10 tech fails of 2009. [10]
MoveOn is a progressive public policy advocacy group and political action committee. Formed in 1998 around one of the first massively viral email petitions, MoveOn has since grown into one of the largest and most impactful grassroots progressive campaigning communities in the United States, with a membership of millions. MoveOn did not endorse a candidate during the 2020 presidential primary campaign; it then endorsed and actively supported Joe Biden in the general election. Rahna Epting has been Executive Director of MoveOn Civic Action and MoveOn Political Action since 2019.
GetUp! is an independent progressive Australian political activist group. It was launched in August 2005 to encourage Internet activism in Australia, though it has increasingly engaged in offline community organising.
Netroots is a term coined in 2002 by Jerome Armstrong to describe political activism organized through blogs and other online media, including wikis and social network services. The word is a portmanteau of Internet and grassroots, reflecting the technological innovations that set netroots techniques apart from other forms of political participation. In the United States, the term is used mainly in left-leaning circles.
Eli Pariser is an author, activist, and entrepreneur. He has stated that his focus is "how to make technology and media serve democracy". He became executive director of MoveOn.org in 2004, where he helped pioneer the practice of online citizen engagement. He is the co-founder of Upworthy, a website for meaningful viral content, and Avaaz, a global citizen's organization. His bestselling book, The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding from You, introduced the term “filter bubble” to the lexicon. He is currently an Omidyar Fellow at New America and co-directs New_ Public.
Jerome Armstrong is an American political strategist. In 2001, he founded MyDD, a blog which covered politics, making him one of the first political bloggers. Armstrong coined the term netroots, and was referred to as "The Blogfather" for having mentored many other famous bloggers such as Markos Moulitsas in their early years. He is credited as one of the architects of Howard Dean's 2004 grassroots presidential campaign, and bringing those tactics to campaigns globally. In 2005, Armstrong co-founded Vox Media with Markos Moulitsas and Tyler Bleszinski.
Shen Tong is an American impact investor, activist, and writer. He founded business accelerators FoodFutureCo in 2015 and Food-X in 2014, the latter of which is recognized by Fast Company as one of "The World's Top 10 Most Innovative Companies of 2015 in Food". He was a Chinese dissident who was exiled as one of the student leaders in the democracy movement at Tiananmen Square in 1989. Shen was one of the People of the Year in Newsweek 1989, and he became a media, software, social entrepreneur, and investor in the late 1990s. He serves on the board of Food Tank.
Peter Jeremy Baldwin is a former Australian politician. He was a member of the House of Representatives from 1983 to 1998, representing the seat of Sydney for the Australian Labor Party (ALP). He served as Minister for Social Security in the Keating government from 1993 to 1996. He was previously a member of the New South Wales Legislative Council from 1976 to 1982.
Hugh Riminton is a Sri Lankan-born Australian foreign correspondent, journalist and television news presenter. He is currently national affairs editor and occasional presenter of 10 News First. He previously co-anchored Ten Eyewitness News with Sandra Sully until February 2017.
The Women's Service Guilds (WSG), initially known as the Women's Service Guilds of Western Australia, was an organising body of the feminist movement in Australia. Founded in 1909, they integrated the campaigns for improved status and welfare of women and children nationally and with overseas organisations.
Avaaz is an American-based nonprofit organization launched in January 2007 that promotes global activism on issues such as climate change, human rights, animal rights, corruption, poverty, and conflict. In 2012, The Guardian referred to Avaaz as "the globe's largest and most powerful online activist network".
Paul Hilder is a British-born social entrepreneur, writer and organiser. As well as working for non-profit organisations, he is a co-founder of openDemocracy.net and has stood for various positions in the Labour Party.
Simon Sheikh is an Australian activist who is currently CEO of superannuation fund Future Super. He was the National Director of GetUp! from 2008 to 2012. He was a delegate to the economics stream of the Australia 2020 Summit and was named the New South Wales Young Professional of the Year in 2007.
Ricken Patel is a Canadian–British activist. He was from 2005 to 2021 the Founding CEO of Avaaz, an online activist network.
Ralph Heimans, is an Australian-British contemporary portrait painter based in London, England. He is considered to be "one of today's leading portrait artists". He is best known for his large-scale Royal portraits of Queen Elizabeth II, Charles, Prince of Wales, and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, along with portraits of leading contemporary cultural figures. In 2014, Heimans was awarded a Member of the Order of Australia for Services to Portraiture.
Oscar Soria is an Argentinian political activist, social journalist, and environmental and human rights campaigner, currently serving as a campaign director in the international activist group Avaaz. Previously he was the global brand director of Greenpeace and afterwards the senior media and external relations director of WWF.
Jeremy Heimans is an Australian entrepreneur and political activist.
More United is a cross-party political movement in the United Kingdom. It describes itself as a "tech-driven political startup" that supports candidates regardless of party affiliation. The movement advocates public service investment, democratic reform, a green economy, tolerant society, and co-operation with the EU.
Saikat Chakrabarti is a political advisor, left-wing activist, and software engineer. He was formerly chief of staff to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the U.S. representative from New York's 14th congressional district representing portions of The Bronx and Queens in New York City.
Far-right politics in Australia describes authoritarian ideologies, including fascism and White supremacy as they manifest in Australia.
Edward Fitzpatrick O’Keefe is the Chief Executive Officer of the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library Foundation, and a former media executive. O’Keefe worked at ABC News, before serving as the founding Editor-in-Chief of media start-up NowThis. After working at NowThis for two years, O’Keefe moved to CNN to lead the strategy and growth of CNN businesses including CNNMoney, CNN Politics, and Travel. In 2019, O’Keefe was accepted as a fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School, where he researched the future of journalism and streaming news, publishing his findings in his paper “Streaming War Won.” During his time at Harvard, O’Keefe also conducted research on Theodore Roosevelt. After leaving Harvard, O’Keefe spent time consulting news organizations and continuing research before announcing his upcoming book and role as CEO of the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library.
online activist group GetUp! was set up in 2005 by two Australian Harvard graduates, Jeremy Heimans and David Madden, who had worked in the US with the online activist group MoveOn.org. GetUp! now has 281,000 members online.