User:Vallarie
Vallarie Yiega is a tech policy analyst. She currently works as an Intellectual Property and Technology Associate at Bowmans, a Pan - African Law Firm. In 2023, she was selected as an ICANN 76 Fellow and is actively engaged in the Internet Society Alumni Steering Committee. In 2022, she was part of the Economic Commission for Africa volunteers who assisted in the execution of the global IGF in Addis Ababa. In 2021, she was a Youth Ambassador at the United Nations (UN) Internet Governance Forum (IGF) held at Katowice, Poland. Part of the IGF was the Global Youth Summit where Vallarie spoke on encryption and capacity building for digital skills. In 2020, she was awarded a Youth Internet Governance fellowship by the Internet Society that led to her appointment by the UN IGF Committee as the Global Youth Representative at the High-Level Closing Panel session. She was also part of the 10 members Fair Digital Businesses working group convened by the German Informatics Society that gathers young people globally to give their input on various thematic areas ahead of the annual IGF. In 2019, she was a NextGen at Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). As an ICANN NextGen, she presented on the impact of the Digital Economy in poverty alleviation at the ICANN 65 policy conference in Morocco. She was also selected as the Program Ambassador to mentor 10 NextGen from Europe and the Asia-Pacific region at the virtual ICANN 68 and ICANN 69 meetings. She was also an Africa Network Information Centre (AFRINIC) fellow. While an AFRINIC 31 Fellow in Angola, she spoke on the importance of including the youth when determining internet connectivity and network infrastructure policy in Africa. In 2019, she was a Fellow at the Kenya School of Internet Governance (KESIG) organized the Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANET). In 2018, She was an Ambassador for Digital Grassroots, a youth led community in charge of building awareness around digital rights. Vallarie believes in being the woman in the arena and probably watches too many Korean films.