Lorelei Kelly

Research Fellow, Open Technology Institute

Lorelei Kelly is the founder or director of five projects in Washington, D.C. with the purpose of system-level change in information flows between Congress and American citizens. She joined New America's Open Technology Institute to pilot Smart Congress --a de-centralized system of expert knowledge and civic participation methods to modernize Congress and increase evidence-based decision making. OTI’s mission is to build a peaceful, connected and open global public square for the 21st Century. Lorelei is a civil-military expert, and --during this time of transition-- is looking at the governance implications of distributed power, including the limits of military force and the need for civil-military balance in cyber security policy. She is examining the requirements of a security strategy for civil society, i.e. privacy, the right to be connected and how citizens can better spend their social capital for political power. Lorelei has degrees from Grinnell College and Stanford University. After living in Berlin while the Cold War ended, she taught at Stanford’s Center on Conflict and Negotiation, then set-up a House-Senate bipartisan study group on global security. She also attended the Air Command and Staff College of the US Air Force. Lorelei has published numerous articles and is the co-author of 2 books, both free and available online.