About Us
The work for the Digitally Left Behind Community is led by a small group of IT industry, academic and technical leaders from around the globe. The following people are actively contributing to this work:
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Dan Bailey
Chief Technology Officer for IBM UK & Ireland Services. He has over 24 years of experiences in the IT industry, having worked across the globe in numerous industries.
Leah Dienger, MSW
An agent of change and innovation, Leah brings to IBM over 20 years of experience as a social worker and advocate for vulnerable populations. At IBM she is a Government Health & Human Services Advisor, working with clients to design solutions to support efficiency in social program delivery, encourage equitable distribution of limited resources, and ultimately improve outcomes for individuals in need.
Richard Hopkins, FREng
Richard was the nineteenth President of IBM's Academy of Technology, an IBM Distinguished Engineer and a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering. He has an extensive history of delivering complex IT for the UK Government, including many systems that intersect with the Digitally Left Behind Community.
Liberty Jacklin
Liberty Jacklin is a Senior Software Engineer at IBM, where she has worked across multiple industries. She is passionate about helping people learn technical skills, improving diversity and inclusion in technical roles and making sure technology is only used as a force for good.
Anju Mehta
Anju Mehta is Technical Solution Leader in IBM, India. She has experience in Technical Sales, designing and implementing solutions for Corporates. She passion for Automation and Cognitive Intelligence, which she implements in her solutions.
Dr Ian Nussey, OBE FREng
Ian spent over 50 years working for IBM in engineering leadership roles. Since retirement he has spent eight years on the Engineering Council, chairing the Academy and Royal Society's Science and Engineering Policy Studies Unit and serving as inaugural chair of the Proactive Membership Committee.
Dr Maurice Perks
Dr Maurice Perks is a retired IBM Fellow, with more than 40 years’ experience in IT systems across several sectors. He spends one day a week helping the DLBC at an IT walk-in centre.
Dr Thomas Schott
Tom is a recently retired program manager from IBM's cloud, cognitive and consulting organizations specializing in software development and solutions with global and distributed teams.
Phil Smith, CBE FREng
Phil Smith is a systems engineer. At Philips Electronics, he led complex IT security and large network developments. At IBM, he built the company’s first-of-its-kind corporate network performance measurement system and designed its European TCP/IP network. At Cisco, he created some of the world’s biggest business-oriented IP networks. While its UK and Ireland Chief Executive and Chairman, he used some of the $1.5B inward investment he secured to create Innovation Centres and Technology Incubators.
Nikolaos Vlastaras
Nikolaos serves as the Sales and Solution Office Lead of IBM's Client Innovation Center in the Netherlands with experience as project manager and design thinking advocate in numerous industries. He has a passion and research background in cognitive engineering for human-centered automation design and performance.
Chris Winter
Independent IT consultant, IBM Fellow retired and Royal Academy of Engineering Visiting Professor at the University of Plymouth. His IT career began in 1969
Dr Maria Wolters
Maria's research focuses on supporting people with long-term conditions live rich and meaningful lives. She has a background in computational linguistics and speech science (PhD, 2000, University of Bonn), human-computer interaction, assistive technology, and eHealth, and a long-term interest in statistics.