Anita Ondine Smith

After spending her early years in Sydney, Australia, Anita lived in the former Yugoslavia before moving to Tasmania. While in Tasmania, Anita and her mother, Anka Makovec, became deeply involved in one of the most significant environmental actions in Australian history - the battle to save the Franklin River from being dammed. That experience sowed the seeds of an ongoing commitment to activism and a desire to tell stories that subvert accepted wisdom, challenging the audience to think and act in different ways. The river's fate was decided in a constitutional law case, in which the High Court voted 4 judges to 3 in favor of saving the river. While attending university in the early 1990's, Anita encountered a primitive version of the internet and immediately embraced its power to connect people, ideas and information, while at the same time recognizing potential threats and opportunities in the areas of copyright and collaboration. Anita's honors thesis is entitled 'Lex Cybertoria: International Law and Copyright on the Internet'. In 1998 Anita wrote a book called The Millennium Bomb Disposal Kit about the impact of technology on business and was a frequent speaker at international conferences on the intersection of law, technology and society. Anita holds a BA and a Law Degree with Honors from the Australian National University and is qualified to practice law in multiple jurisdictions. Anita spent the majority of her professional career as an attorney in the City of London where she advised major corporates such as Reuters on the legal implications of complex technology transactions. Anita also worked for Lehman Brothers, the global investment bank, where she was a Senior Vice President in the Executive Division. Throughout this period, Anita explored various outlets for expressing her creative voice, including photography, blogging and directing short films. In 2006 Anita started her own production company, where she combines her corporate experience with a lifelong love of visual and verbal storytelling. Touch Light Media is currently focused on making movies that touch on at least one (preferably more) of its three core themes: technology, the environment and women's stories. Anita has served as a Board Member for Disability Equality in Education and is a Founding Board Member of BlueGlobe, a technology platform for gathering and distributing environmental stories and information. Anita is a life member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and supports Creative Commons initiatives. Despite living abroad for many years, Anita still identifies as being "from Tasmania" and likes to retreat there from time to time.