Renata Ávila

As an international lawyer specialised in digital rights, her first case with an international impact, as legal representative of Rigoberta Menchú Tum, was related to the defence of survivors of genocide and other human rights abuses in Guatemala. Throughout her career, she has focused on the interface between human rights, technology and freedom of expression, with clients including Julian Assange and WikiLeaks, who she defended under the coordination of Baltasar Garzón. One of the first people to recognise the emancipatory power of open knowledge, she is a representative of the Creative Commons directory and an advisory board member of DiEM25, a pan-European initiative launched by Yanis Varufakis to save democracy.

She is Executive Director of the Fundación Ciudadano Inteligente (Smart Citizen Foundation), an organisation created to strengthen democracy and reduce inequality in Latin America, which promotes transparency and citizen participation through the innovative use of digital technologies. Co-author of the book Women, Whistleblowing, WikiLeaks (OR Books, 2017), she is currently writing a book on digital colonialism and regularly writes expert opinion and analysis articles for a number of news publications.