Catherine Adeya serves as the Director of Research at the World Wide Web Foundation. She is responsible for coordinating a research team dedicated to interrogating and understanding the most important barriers to achieving our vision of a web that is safe and empowering for everyone. This includes ensuring that the challenge of getting the unconnected half of the world online (SDG 9c) central to global policy debates, developing the evidence that women and girls have a different experience online, and helping the research function to be able to respond to a changing external context.

Dr Adeya is an experienced leader, researcher, and advocate with over 20 years working in technology and development with rich experience across academia, civil society, government, and the private sector. Most recently, she led the development of the East Africa Centre for Internet Governance and Policy (CIGAP) at the renowned Strathmore University in Nairobi. She has also served as the Director of Business Process Outsourcing at the Ministry of ICT in Kenya. In 2013, she was appointed the founder CEO of the Konza Technopolis Development Authority.

Catherine began her career as a Research Fellow at the United Nations University’s Institute for New Technologies in Maastricht, The Netherlands. Driven by a commitment to tackling global inequality, she moved back to Africa due to her belief that the web and digital technologies must be used to expand opportunities and drive development. She has pursued this mission within the public, private, and civil society sectors as well as at international organizations. A graduate of the pioneering class of Information Sciences at Moi University in Kenya; she also holds a PhD in Information and Development from Edinburgh, Scotland.