Michelle Thorne

Michelle Thorne (@thornet) is working towards a fossil-free internet. She is a senior advisor to the Green Web Foundation after 12 years at the Mozilla Foundation, where she served as Sustainable Internet Lead and established a catalyst fund for digital rights and climate justice. Michelle publishes Branch, an online magazine written by and for people who dream about a sustainable internet, which received the Ars Electronica Award for Digital Humanities in 2021.

She is also a co-organizer of Open Climate and co-led a PhD program on Open Design of Trust Things (OpenDoTT) with Mozilla and Northumbria University.

Michelle founded the Mozilla Festival, Mozilla’s Open Internet of Things Studio, Ding magazine, and a web literacy program called Maker Party. Michelle managed the Creative Commons international affiliate network from 2007 – 2010. She is a council member of the Billion Seconds Institute, a member of ClimateAction.Tech, a network of tech workers accelerating climate action. and co-founded a sustainable fashion label, Zephyr Berlin.