Voice
1 link
Graph · Person
Neema Iyer
01 · In focus
One person, in the field.
The structured facts the source records about Neema Iyer, the count of declared adjacencies in the corpus, and the federation map zoomed on this node and its neighbours.
person
↑5 declared connections
02 · Connections
5 adjacencies, by relation.
Split by direction. Direct links are the ones Neema Iyer’s source record names; inferred backlinks are records elsewhere in the corpus that point at this entity.
Direct from this record
2 links
Links named in this entity's structured fields.
Affiliated with
1 link
Inferred backlinks
3 links
Other records that name this entity.
Key person at
1 link
Authored
1 link
Referenced by voices
1 link
03 · Background
From the source record.
Body prose as it appears in movement-graph’s published markdown for this entity. Links to other corpus entities resolve to their graph page; links to deeper repo paths are kept as text so the page does not invent a route.
Indian-Ugandan technologist, artist, and researcher; Founder of Pollicy, the Kampala-headquartered Ugandan feminist civic-technology collective she established in 2016 and led as Executive Director through August 2023 when she stepped down and continues as advisor and board member. The principal public-facing voice of the corpus's sub-Saharan African feminist-tech anchor, currently based between Sydney and Kampala.
Raised in Nigeria by Tanzanian and Indian parents, Iyer trained as an epidemiologist — completing a Masters in Public Health at Emory University with a focus on epidemiology and statistics — and worked across large-scale mobile and digital initiatives in Africa at TTC Mobile and Viamo before moving to Uganda in 2013 and founding Pollicy in 2016 to "reshape government service delivery in Africa through better, more responsible data practice". Her self-description as "Artist. Maker. Researcher." and "Creative Technologist" sits behind Pollicy's distinctive pairing of empirical research and policy advocacy with creative and speculative work — visible most directly in her illustration practice (under @neemascribbles), her character design for Pollicy's Choose Your Own Fake News misinformation-awareness game, and the speculative-fiction commissioning of Pollicy's Africana Futurism programme.
Iyer's fellowship and recognition record routes Pollicy's East African Afro-feminist data and AI work into the wider Global North digital-rights field. She is a Senior Fellow in Trustworthy AI at the Mozilla Foundation (since 2022) following a Mozilla Creative Media Award in 2020, was a 2021-22 Practitioner Fellow at Stanford PACS's Digital Civil Society Lab where she authored Automated Imperialism, Expansionist Dreams on digital extractivism in Africa, was appointed in July 2021 to Facebook (now Meta)'s Global Women's Safety Advisory Board, was named a 2021 Quartz Africa Innovator, and received the 2021 Coalition for Digital Equality Research and Knowledge Builder award. Alongside the institutional fellowships she appears as a guest practitioner on Open Restitution Africa's Access For Who? podcast series on digital restitution (hosted by Chao Tayiana Maina and Molemo Moiloa) and is a PhD candidate at the University of Sydney researching feminist game design — the doctoral extension of the Pollicy-anchored Afro-feminist speculative-and-creative methodological line. Iyer is the corpus's principal Ugandan / East African feminist-tech anchor and the African-side counterpart, in the make-AI-good corpus's regional shape, to Coding Rights's Latin American feminist-tech anchor at Joana Varon.
04 · Sources
Where this came from.
8 sources listed from the pinned corpus. Links are shown only when the source URL is a valid HTTP(S) address.
- 8 source links shown
- 3 body links rewritten to graph pages
- 0 omitted links on this page
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en.wikipedia.org
Checked 2026-05-15Wikipedia entry for Neema Iyer — primary secondary source for her background as the child of Tanzanian and Indian parents raised in Nigeria, her Masters in Public Health (epidemiology and statistics) from Emory University, her 2013 move to Uganda, her founding of Pollicy in Kampala, her 2023 stepping-down as Executive Director with continued service as advisor and board member, her 2021 Quartz Africa Innovator and 2021 Coalition-for-Digital-Equality Research-and-Knowledge-Builder recognitions, her July 2021 appointment to Facebook's Global Women's Safety Advisory Board, her 2021-22 Stanford PACS Digital Civil Society Lab Practitioner Fellowship and authored "Automated Imperialism, Expansionist Dreams" essay during that period, and her digital-illustration contributions to Pollicy research including character design for the Choose Your Own Fake News game; already cited in org-pollicy
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pollicy.org
Checked 2026-05-15Pollicy's own About page — primary source for Iyer's founding of Pollicy in 2016 and the 2023 succession; already cited in org-pollicy
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neemaiyer.com
Checked 2026-05-15Iyer's own personal site — primary source for her self-description as "Artist. Maker. Researcher." and "Creative Technologist" working at the intersection of data, design, and technology, her current base between Sydney and Kampala, her current PhD candidacy at the University of Sydney on feminist game design, her Mozilla Foundation Creative Media Award (2020) and Senior Fellowship in Trustworthy AI (2022), her Stanford Practitioner Fellowship (2021), her Coalition for Digital Equality award (2021), her Quartz Top Africa Innovators recognition (2021), her Meta Global Women's Safety Advisory Board appointment (2021), and the 2023 Digital Security Expo recognition; the personal site lists "Access for Who? A Podcast On Digital Restitution" as a speaking/writing credit (role not specified by the page — see openrestitution.africa source for the corrected guest-not-host attribution)
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pacscenter.stanford.edu
Checked 2026-05-15Stanford Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society Digital Civil Society Lab profile — primary source for Iyer's 2021-22 Practitioner Fellowship, the framing of her research focus as "the intersection of data, design and technology through a feminist lens", her prior work at TTC Mobile and Viamo on large-scale mobile and digital initiatives across Africa, and her artist practice under the handle @neemascribbles
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mozillafoundation.org
Checked 2026-05-15Mozilla Foundation senior-fellow profile page for Iyer — primary source for her Senior Fellowship in Trustworthy AI (2022) and the routing of Pollicy's East African feminist-tech work into the wider Mozilla-supported digital-rights infrastructure; already cited in org-pollicy
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ug.linkedin.com
Checked 2026-05-15Iyer's own Ugandan LinkedIn profile — primary source for the "Founder - Artist - Keynote Speaker" current public framing and the LinkedIn-canonical public profile URL referenced by the personal site and supported by Wikipedia
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thegoodrobot.co.uk
Checked 2026-05-15The Good Robot podcast feature on Iyer — independent secondary source for her Afro-feminist approach to AI governance and policy in Africa, treating African feminist movements as the methodological starting point for African AI policy work rather than an afterthought to Global North digital-rights vocabularies; already cited in org-pollicy
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openrestitution.africa
Checked 2026-05-18Open Restitution Africa launch page for the *Access For Who? A Podcast On Digital Restitution* five-part series — primary source for the podcast's host line of Chao Tayiana Maina and Molemo Moiloa and Iyer's role as a guest practitioner (not host) featured alongside Temi Odumosu, Nothando Migogo, Minne Atairu, Kọ́lá Túbọ̀sún, Golda Ha-Eiros, Andrea Wallace, Samba Yonga, and Mulenga Kapwepwe; corrects a host-vs-guest framing previously misread from Iyer's personal-site listing; already cited in voice-neema-iyer
Source: entities/persons/person-neema-iyer.md in movement-graph at pin 3cc1a36.