Michael Brennan

Michael Brennan is the technology program officer on the Internet Freedom team with the Ford Foundation. He oversees a portfolio of grantees that globally address open Internet issues through a technical lens and also helps to develop and manage a technology fellows program at the foundation.

He co-founded the Privacy, Security and Automation Lab at Drexel University, where he worked as senior researcher. During his tenure at Drexel, Michael served as a technologist for the Federal Trade Commission’s Division of Privacy and Identity Protection. Prior to joining the Ford Foundation in 2015, he was an associate partner at SecondMuse, an innovation strategy firm dedicated to finding collaborative solutions for large-scale problems. His work at SecondMuse included developing global social impact technology communities with institutions such as NASA and Al Jazeera. Michael earned a PhD in computer science from Drexel University.