Jochai Ben-Avie
Jochai Ben-Avie’s career has been centered at the intersection of technology and human rights, as a leader in global policy, advocacy, and philanthropy. He is the Co-Founder and CEO of Connect Humanity which supports, catalyzes, and scales solutions to bring meaningful internet access to all. He also serves as a consultant advising some of the largest foundations working on internet policy, and is a Nonresident Fellow at the Atlantic Council, a Truman National Security Fellow, a World Economic Forum Global Shaper, and a Board Member of Code for Science & Society.
Jochai was previously Mozilla’s Head of International Public Policy and lead of the Firefox maker’s open source funding arm, the Mozilla Open Source Support Program (MOSS). During his time at Mozilla, he scaled the policy team from a solely US focus to a global presence active in shaping legislation across six continents to build a better internet. Under his leadership, the MOSS program grew from a side-of-desk, opportunistic fund to a fully professionalized grants program that played a direct role in broadening access, increasing security, and empowering users of open source technology worldwide.
Prior to Mozilla, Jochai was the inaugural policy and advocacy director at Access Now, a non-profit dedicated to defending and extending the digital rights of users at risk around the world. His work shaped, built out, and grew the organization’s footprint in the sector, helping it to become one of the largest global digital rights organizations. During his time at Access Now, he co-founded RightsCon, the premier global conference on the intersection of technology and human rights, and RedLatAm, the largest network of digital rights organizations in Latin America.
Jochai has also worked in educational policy and terrorism and reconciliation, in addition to his experience in global internet policy and philanthropy. He was privileged to receive his education at Bard College at Simon’s Rock where he graduated summa cum laude and the University of Oxford’s Lincoln College.
