Photo: Groundswell, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons⁷

Will Byrne

US-based activist and entrepreneur

Will Byrne is an activist and entrepreneur. Will was named one of Forbes’s 30 Under 30.²

From Wikipedia’s article on Will Byrne (this version), CC BY-SA 4.0.

Companies

GroundswellFounder⁶

Early life and education

Date not recordedVassar College³
Date not recordedStanford University³

Career

Occupation: writer.⁵

Date not recordedFounded Groundswell⁴

Early career

Byrne worked in journalism at Der Spiegel as well as the American Academy in Berlin, Germany, before joining Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign.

During his work on President Obama's 2008 campaign, Byrne utilized online and offline community organizing tactics. Byrne and his co-founders saw the impact of community organizing in the political sphere. Rather than joining the administration after Obama was elected, Byrne went on to develop these tactics as a social entrepreneur.

Later work

Following Stanford, Byrne was Senior Director of the Innovation Lab at Human Rights First, and presented about issues of bias, inclusion, and human rights in computer vision and artificial intelligence technology. As of 2023, he was listed as an affiliated fellow at the Citris Policy Lab, which describes itself as supporting interdisciplinary research and education regarding the role of regulation in promoting innovation.