Announcing the 2025 Internet Leadership Award Winners

The i2Coalition 2025 Congressional Fly-In will conclude with our annual Internet Leadership Awards ceremony. This is where we honor members of this community for their contributions in making the Internet a better place. We are pleased to announce this year’s winners, and we look forward to handing them their awards in person during the Fly-In.

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Internet Infrastructure Protection Award: Mike Masnick, founder and editor of TechDirt

An offshoot of Mike Masnick’s Floor64 insight project, TechDirt was the most linked-to media source during the battle over the SOPA copyright bill. Masnick also coined the phrase “The Streisand Effect,” describing how attempts to stifle speech online can end up bringing even more attention to the issue at hand.

Internet Community Leadership Award: Becky Burr, privacy and e-commerce advocate

J. Beckwith Burr (Becky) has helped shape government policy on the Internet and championed the bottom up, multistakeholder approach to Internet governance for nearly thirty years. Becky’s history in the Internet governance space reaches back to the mid 1990’s where, as the head of NTIA’s Office of International Affairs, she served as the primary editor of the Clinton Administration’s Framework for Global Electronic Commerce, a US-led effort to promote a free and open global electronic marketplace with minimal government intervention, emphasizing private sector innovation and international cooperation, which was embodied in President Clinton’s Executive Order on Electronic Commerce.

Outside of the Internet governance space, Becky has been a pioneer in privacy law both inside and outside of the government. She is currently a partner at HWG LLP, a boutique law firm in Washington D.C. that has earned a first class reputation for excellence in telecom and technology regulation, trial and appellate litigation, legal and governmental ethics, energy, national security, and privacy.

i2Coalition Impact Award: Jesse Friedman, Head of WP Cloud

It’s nearly impossible to work in the world of Internet infrastructure for very long without meeting Jesse Friedman—and completely impossible if you work in open source. He is the author of Web Designers Guide to WordPress and a member of the New Riders Voices that Matter series. Friedman is a former professor, as well as a long-term WordPress community contributor.

Internet Entrepreneur Award: James Webb, Chief Operations Officer at BigScoots

In running a major cloud infrastructure provider, James Webb sees success as a byproduct of passion and empathy. His achievements with Chicago-based BigScoots proves that “the cloud” isn’t just one thing that has already been built, but a human-driven technology whose future is yet to be fully realized.

Champion of the Internet Award: Doreen Bogdan-Martin, Secretary-General of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU)
(Accepting remotely)

Doreen Bogdan-Martin has held leadership positions in the field of international telecommunications policy for over three decades, with a track-record of brokering innovative partnerships to expand digital inclusion and connectivity for everyone around the world. Following her historic election by ITU Member States in September 2022, she became the first woman ever to head the organization, which was first established in 1865 and became a UN specialized agency in 1947.

As ITU Secretary-General, she aims to drive innovative solutions, maximize ITU’s relevance for its 193 Member States, intensify global cooperation on connecting the unconnected, and strengthen the alignment of ITU’s programmes with the Sustainable Development Goals set out by the United Nations. Ms Bogdan-Martin has consistently emphasized the need for digital transformation to achieve economic prosperity, job creation, skills development, gender equality, and socio-economic inclusion, as well as to build circular economies, reduce climate impact, and save lives.

Internet Leadership Awards Ceremony and Reception

When: 4:00pm-6:00pm October 9, 2025

Where: CET Innovation House in Washington, D.C.

Cost: $35 per ticket, which includes all refreshments

You can use this link to grab a ticket.

Note: When you register for the i2Coalition Congressional Fly-In, the Awards Ceremony and reception are already included.