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Leslie Harris is the President & CEO of the Center for Democracy & Technology (www.cdt.org), which works to keep the Internet open, innovative and free.

Ms. Harris has defended the open Internet since its earliest days, from the fight over the Communications Decency Act to the recent campaigns against SOPA and CISPA. She was twice named one of Washington’s “Tech Titans” by Washingtonian Magazine. She has also been selected as Fast Company’s “Most Influential Women in Technology” and as the Huffington Post’s “10 Female Tech CEOs to Watch.”

Prior to joining CDT, Ms. Harris was the founder and president of a mission- driven government affairs firm that aimed to strengthen the voice of civil society in emerging policy debates on new technology and the Internet.
Earlier, Ms. Harris served as Chief Legislative Counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union and was also in private law practice in Washington, DC.

Ms. Harris received her law degree cum laude from the Georgetown University Law Center and her BA at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she graduated Phi Beta Kappa. She is a senior fellow at the University of Colorado’s Silicon Flatiron Center for Law, Technology and Entrepreneurship.