In 2022, InternetLab completes eight years of practice. Throughout this period, we have progressed from a small and experimental organization to a research institution involving five thematic areas and 18 people, active in national and international spaces and networks that are critical to the development of Internet policies.

In recent years, we have been transforming to respond to this increase in work and responsibilities. Neither InternetLab nor the Internet policy debate field is the same as before. In 2020, for example, we created and implemented a series of institutional policies to guide our hiring processes, our initiatives to promote diversity and non-discrimination, our conflict of interest management, and our relationship with funders. Knowing that the organization’s governance is critical to our consolidation, in 2021, we began to take bolder steps to develop new ways of making our most strategic decisions and of occupying leadership and oversight positions.

It is with great joy that we announce updates on these topics. Today is the day we expand our General Assembly, with new members joining the Lab’s highest decision-making body, and new directors assuming new positions. Today, director Mariana Valente starts combining her activities at InternetLab with university teaching outside of Brazil, and director Francisco Brito Cruz takes up the role of executive director of the organization. We bring further information on these changes below.

As the directors of InternetLab up to this day, we are very grateful to our entire team of motivated and brilliant people for their work in this transition, and to our funders for their confidence. Especially because of the support we have received from Ford, Luminate, and Open Society Foundations, we have been able to count on some of the best professionals in Brazil and abroad for designing this new governance structure and for preparing our new leadership positions.

What changes?

• General Assembly: InternetLab is organized as a non-profit association, and the body that elects the executive board and makes strategic decisions is the General Assembly of Associates. Today, besides Francisco Brito Cruz and Mariana Valente, three relevant names in discussions about technology and society also join the Assembly: João Brant, Laura Schertel and Silvana Bahia. With them, the association now incorporates more visions. In addition, it enters a new phase concerning general governance, in which the assembly is majorly composed of people who do not work in management positions in the Lab.
• New positions on the board of directors: director Mariana Valente is now a professor at the University of Saint Gallen, where she will hold the Lemann Chair for Law and Economics and teach about regulation of new technologies and human rights. She will also develop partnerships with Brazilian and Latin American organizations and universities. At InternetLab, she continues as Associate Director, leaving her previous management activities and taking on more content and internationalization work. Former director Francisco Brito Cruz assumes now the position of Executive Director, becoming responsible for nominating other positions on the board of directors and for the organization’s general coordination and institutional representation.
• New directors: Fernanda K. Martins and Heloísa Massaro, who previously held the respective positions of coordinator of Inequalities and Identities and Information and Policy areas, become Directors and assume roles of representation and management. By bringing very rich backgrounds and perspectives, the entrance of Fernanda Martins and Heloisa Massaro means a great renewal and many new paths ahead for us.

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By taking these steps, we hope that InternetLab moves towards its institutional consolidation, going beyond the trajectory of the individuals who have so far directed the organization. With this, we seek that ILab renews its critical spirit also in its structures, practices and leadership.

Francisco Brito Cruz
Mariana Valente