Ben Adida

Yo, you gotta hear about Ben Adida. This guy’s the real deal when it comes to tech and making shit actually matter. So, he’s been deep in the voting tech game since way back in ’97, like, almost 30 years of grinding. Dude’s seen every mess-up, every hack, every broken system, and he’s just not cool with that bullshit. That’s why he’s all about open-source voting machines now. Like, he literally started VotingWorks in 2018, part of YC W19, to build transparent, hack-proof voting tech for the US. No cap.

But his story’s way bigger than just voting. He’s been around the block in some heavy hitters: Mozilla, Square, Clever, and even Harvard Medical School. He’s led teams, crushed engineering roles, and always kept that open data, cryptography, and software advocacy close to his heart. The dude’s a PhD from MIT, advised by Ron Rivest himself, yeah, the cryptography legend. That’s some serious creds right there.

He’s been deep into the open web and free software scenes. Co-created RDFa to make data on the web easy to share and reuse. Served on the board at Creative Commons, pushing for open culture. This isn’t just about tech for tech’s sake, it’s about empowering people, building trust, and smashing bullshit in the digital world.

What really drives him? It’s clear he’s on a mission to make democracy more trustworthy and accessible. He’s seen how bad voting systems can be, full of doubts, hacks, and corruption, and he jumped into the fight to fix that for good. That’s why VotingWorks isn’t just a project; it’s a vision for a transparent, open, and fair election process that everyone can trust.

So, in a nutshell: Ben Adida is a tech pioneer with a heart. He’s been crushing it in the open source world, pushing for safer, more trustworthy voting, and building tools that actually make a difference. He’s the kind of guy who sees problems and just jumps in to fix them, no BS, just real impact. That’s why he’s so important.