There are a growing number of people asking important questions about how the internet is affecting society. To learn from them more deeply, and to call on their expertise to help us better understand how technology and society intersect, we’re proud to announce the Doteveryone Fellows programme — as well as its co-designers and first recipients, Sam Jeffers and Jennie Winhall.

Sam and Jennie will partner with us on this pilot to design what the Doteveryone Fellowship should look like, as well as make progress on their own research. We expect to roll out the programme fully later in 2018.

If you want to chat more about Doteveryone Fellows, send us a note at [email protected].

Who are the first Fellows?

Sam Jeffers runs The Shop, a consultancy helping clients break through difficult business problems and test new ideas using collaborative five day “sprints”, rather than expensive, long-term consulting projects. Clients include the Royal Albert Hall, The Mayor of London and UNISON, the UK’s largest trade union.

Before opening The Shop in 2016, Sam spent 7 years at Blue State Digital (the agency that helped elect President Obama in 2008 and 2012) as UK Managing Director, then Executive Creative and Strategy Director.

He’s also the co-founder of Who Targets Me?, an initiative to help voters understand how political parties are chasing their vote using Facebook advertising. The project ran during the 2017 UK General Election Campaign, garnering coverage by the BBC, all major national newspapers and international media including the New York Times and Vice.

Jennie Winhall is a leading UK social innovator and service designer. She combines user insight with design, policy and enterprise to develop transformative solutions to big social issues such as inequality, unemployment, chronic disease and an ageing population.

As a founding member and Director of Innovation at Participle, Jennie led multi-disciplinary teams in designing a number of new social ventures launched across the UK that demonstrated a new model of public services based on capabilities called ‘relational welfare’.

Jennie became an independent consultant in 2013 and works with foundations, public institutions and corporations making social change. She currently runs a social incubator called Alt/Now in Canada, which brings public and private sector leaders together in a nine-month program to prototype and launch new ventures designed to have systemic impact on a specific societal challenge. She also leads teams with the Rockwool Foundation in Copenhagen combining research and evaluation with service design to develop and scale new services in youth employment, immigration and education.

What will the Fellows be working on?

In addition to helping us develop the programme itself, Jennie and Sam will spend the next nine months continuing and expanding their own research.

Sam will be exploring the advocacy approach for Who Targets Me, his initiative to help voters understand how political parties are chasing their vote using Facebook advertising. He’ll be looking at how we can increase transparency about the use of paid media in UK elections, as well as how we can make sure new tech does more good than harm when it comes to our elections and campaigns.

Inspired by Amartya Sen’s and Martha Nussbaum’s Capabilities Approach, Jennie will be looking at algorithm bias — not mitigating for it, but repurposing it to focus on people’s strengths. She’ll be looking at how technology can help “rewrite people’s scripts”, creating a world where digital can actively foster what we’re capable of.

Why a fellowship?

There’s a growing field of actors working on the social, cultural, and political effects of technology. Doteveryone is committed to building connections and bringing in new perspectives to this field: further defining it, raising awareness of the unintended consequences of the internet, and helping direct explorations of the internet’s impact on our society. We want to support others who feel the same way.

Who’s the fellowship for?

The Doteveryone Fellowship is for anyone who’s asking important ethical and societal questions about technology: designers, technologists, journalists, producers and practitioners.

How will Doteveryone support the Fellows?

Over nine months, we’ll offer our Fellows recognition, a bursary (either financial or via design and research support), space in our office and access to our networks, whilst continuing with their existing activities.

How will the Fellows support Doteveryone?

Our Fellows will produce public-facing outputs as well as contribute to Doteveryone’s strands of work. We’ll also ask them to foster collaborative activities that strengthen the fields in which we work through hosting workshops, events and co-authoring. Since Jennie and Sam are also part of the pilot, they’ll help us co-design and test the structure of the Fellows programme itself.

When will the next round of Fellows be announced?

Once we’ve developed a more concrete version of the programme, we’ll open applications for the next round of Doteveryone Fellows. We expect to announce our new Fellows in mid- to late 2018.

If you have any questions about the Doteveryone Fellows programme, or if you’d like to talk to us more about responsible tech and digital society, send a note to [email protected]. We’re always happy to chat.