Elisabeth Sylvan joined the Berkman Klein Center as the Center’s new Managing Director on July 1, 2019, after a nation-wide search.
“Lis shares our deep commitment to creating an even more vibrant, diverse, and inclusive Center,” says Urs Gasser, executive director of the Berkman Klein Center. “She will work with us to explore and embrace new institutional opportunities, strengthen the Center’s operating system and support our staff, lead innovative educational programs, develop new modes of engagement with our networks, and explore novel ideas to foster interdisciplinary collaborations and learnings across teams as we seek to increase the Center’s impact in a rapidly changing world.”
Lis brings a wealth of experiences, perspectives, skills, and networks to BKC’s leadership team. Over the past twenty years of her career, Lis has engaged as a researcher (Ph.D. from MIT Media Lab), program strategist and team builder (The Tech Museum in Silicon Valley), community builder and data geek (director at Manylabs in San Francisco), educator (Northeastern University), and consultant with a focus on education innovation and strategy, to name a few of her many accomplishments.
“I'm honored to join Berkman Klein's team. For many years I've followed BKC's intellectual leadership in internet issues and admired how the Center has trail-blazed new paths in this perennially changing landscape,” Sylvan says. “I’m incredibly excited by the trajectory in front of us: being responsive but not reactive to the cultural climate, nimbly exploring and developing emergent ideas, and working across multiple scales from the hyper-local to the international.”