Board
Our team is our most valuable resource and the main reason for our success. Currently, our Board of Directors is led by three key people along with an an extensive Board of Advisors representing a broad array of experience. Learn more about their accomplishments and the deep experience they offer.
Board of Directors
Austin Heap, Executive Director
One of the founders of the CRC and the organization’s Executive Director, Austin Heap is an entrepreneur, technologist and activist whose work centers on developing Internet-based technologies to facilitate the rapid transfer of knowledge between people, groups, and organizations. He is the recipient of the First Amendment Coalition Beacon award, runner-up in the Huffington Post Political 2010 Game Changer competition, and a finalist in the 2010 WeMedia awards. Prior to establishing the CRC, Austin was a Chief Technology Officer at an Internet firm serving Fortune 50 companies where he developed technologies that simultaneously optimized users’ networking and personalization within and between online communities and organizations. Austin has also been involved in the creation of social media applications. He holds a B.S. from Bentley College.
Austin can be reached at austin@censorshipresearch.org.
Daniel Colascione, Director of Technology
Daniel Colascione is one of the founders of the CRC and is currently its Director of Technology. Daniel is the creator and chief architect of Haystack, the CRC’s flagship project designed to counter Iran’s censorship technology and the infrastructure to support it. He previously worked as a commercial software developer where he led teams developing and implementing both interactive web technologies and high-performance, robust, and scalable infrastructure products. He has worked in the open-source community for many years, contributing in areas ranging from web browser improvement to protocol optimization to programming language profiling. He holds a B.S. from the University at Buffalo in Computer Science.
Daniel can be reached at daniel@censorshipresearch.org.
Babak Siavoshy, Director of Development
Babak Siavoshy is the Director of Development for the CRC and an attorney at the international law firm of O’Melveny & Myers, LLP. In the fall of 2009, Babak was a visiting scholar at Georgetown’s Center on National Security and the Law. Babak served as a law clerk to the Honorable John T. Noonan, Jr., on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit from 2008 – 2009. He graduated Order of the Coif from Berkeley Law where he was Associate Editor of the Berkeley Journal of International Law and worked on the Berkeley Technology Law Journal. He also holds a B.A., magna cum laude, in Philosophy and English Literature from U.C. Berkeley, where he served as a Graduate Student Instructor. At Berkeley, Babak was a co-founder of the Iranian Student Alliance in America (ISAA), a student organization focused on Iranian-American issues.
Babak can be reached at babak@censorshipresearch.org.
Board of Advisors
Karim Sadjadpour, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Karim Sadjadpour is an associate at the Carnegie Endowment. He joined Carnegie after four years as the chief Iran analyst at the International Crisis Group based in Tehran and Washington, D.C. A leading researcher on Iran, Sadjadpour has conducted dozens of interviews with senior Iranian officials, and hundreds with Iranian intellectuals, clerics, dissidents, paramilitaries, businessmen, students, activists, and youth, among others.
He is a regular contributor to BBC World TV and radio, CNN, National Public Radio, and PBS NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, and has written for the Economist, Washington Post, New York Times, International Herald Tribune, and New Republic.
Frequently called upon to brief U.S. and EU officials about Middle Eastern affairs, he has testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, given lectures at Harvard, Princeton, and Stanford Universities, and has been the recipient of numerous academic awards, including a Fulbright scholarship.
Sadjadpour was named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum in Davos, and is a board member of the Banu Foundation, an organization dedicated to assisting grass-roots organizations that are empowering women worldwide. He has lived in Latin America, Europe, and the Middle East.
Abbas Milani, Stanford University
Abbas Milani is the Hamid and Christina Moghadam Director of Iranian Studies at Stanford University and a visiting professor in the department of political science. In addition, Dr. Milani is a research fellow and co-director of the Iran Democracy Project at the Hoover Institution. His expertise is U.S./Iran relations, Iranian cultural, political, and security issues.
Milani was a professor of history and political science and chair of the department at Notre Dame de Namur University and a research fellow at the Institute of International Studies at the University of California at Berkeley. Milani was an assistant professor in the faculty of law and political science at Tehran University and a member of the board of directors of Tehran University’s Center for International Studies from 1979 to 1987. He was a research fellow at the Iranian Center for Social Research from 1977 to 1978 and an assistant professor at the National University of Iran from 1975 to 1977.
Dr. Milani is the author of Eminent Persians: Men and Women Who Made Modern Iran, 1941-1979, (Syracuse University Press, Syracuse, NY, 2 volumes, November, 2008); King of Shadows: Essays on Iran’s Encounter with Modernity, Persian text published in the U.S. (Ketab Corp., Spring 2005); Lost Wisdom: Rethinking Persian Modernity in Iran, (Mage 2004); The Persian Sphinx: Amir Abbas Hoveyda and the Riddle of the Iranian Revolution (Mage, 2000); Modernity and Its Foes in Iran (Gardon Press, 1998); Tales of Two Cities: A Persian Memoir (Mage 1996); On Democracy and Socialism, a collection of articles coauthored with Faramarz Tabrizi (Pars Press, 1987); and Malraux and the Tragic Vision (Agah Press, 1982). Milani has also translated numerous books and articles into Persian and English.
Milani’s articles have been published in journals, magazines, and newspapers including the Boston Review, Brown Journal of World Affairs, Herald Tribune, Journal of Democracy, New York Times, Washington Post, Washington Quarterly, Wall Street Journal, Encyclopedia Iranica, Hoover Digest, Iranshenasi, The Middle East Journal, New York Review of Books, San Francisco Chronicle, and the Times Literary Supplement. He has been interviewed for radio and television, appearing on BBC, CNN, NPR, KQED, Radio France, Radio Farda, Radio Free Europe, Radio and Television of Iran, and Voice of America.
He is a member of the American Association of Political Science, member of the board of directors for ISG (Iranian Studies Group at MIT), and the Association of Iranian Studies.
Milani received his BA in political science and economics from the University of California at Berkeley in 1970 and his PhD in political science from the University of Hawaii in 1974.
Gary Sick, Columbia University
Professor Gary Sick is a senior research scholar at SIPA’s Middle East Institute, and an adjunct professor of International and Public Affairs.
He is the author of All Fall Down: America’s Tragic Encounter With Iran (Random House 1985) and October Surprise: America’s Hostages in Iran and the Election of Ronald Reagan (Random House 1991).
Professor Sick served on the National Security Council under Presidents Ford, Carter, and Reagan. He was the principal White House aide for Iran during the Iranian Revolution and the hostage crisis. Sick is a captain (ret.) in the U.S. Navy, with service in the Persian Gulf, North Africa, and the Mediterranean. He was the deputy director for International Affairs at the Ford Foundation from 1982 to 1987, where he was responsible for programs relating to U.S. foreign policy. He is also a member of the board of Human Rights Watch in New York and the chairman of the Advisory Committee of Human Rights Watch/Middle East. He was the executive director of Gulf/2000, an international research project on political, economic, and security developments in the Persian Gulf, being conducted at Columbia University from 1994 to 1995 on behalf of the W. Alton Jones and Rockefeller Foundations.
Gary Sick received his BA from Kansas University in 1957 and a Master of Science from George Washington University in 1970. In 1973 he earned a PhD from Columbia.
