Neema Iyer


Neema Iyer, is a technologist and artist. She is the founder and the former executive director of Pollicy, a civic technology organization based in Kampala, Uganda.
WWW neemaiyer.com

Early life and education

Iyer was raised in Nigeria by parents who are Tanzanian and Indian. She then attended Emory University and completed a Masters in Public Health with a focus on epidemiology and statistics before returning to Africa.

Career

After Iyer moved to Uganda in 2013, she worked in information and communications technology, and then founded the civic technology organization Pollicy. Pollicy focuses on the intersection of data design and technology, and has received grant funding from Facebook and Mozilla. In 2014, she was the Text to Change programme coordinator in Uganda, which included work on a program to improve access to clean water.
Pollicy and Iyer have conducted research, including about gender-based violence in Africa, and online safety for women, with reports illustrated by Iyer. In 2020, after Iyer submitted the concept idea to the Mozilla Creative Awards, Pollicy partnered with Mozilla to create the "Choose Your Own Fake News" game, which her team spent months developing. Iyer drew the characters for the game, and emphasized in her designs the target audience of Africans. Other Pollicy projects include a mockumentary about digital security developed with support from the University of California, Berkeley Center for Long-term Cybersecurity, and a "Digital safe-tea" game designed with a "choose your own adventure" format to promote online safety awareness for women in Africa.
In July 2021, Iyer was appointed to the Global Women's Safety Advisory Board at Facebook. She was a 2021-2022 Digital Civil Society Lab fellow in the Stanford PACS program of the Stanford Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society. In 2022, Iyer and Pollicy announced a Digital Ambassadors program to promote the development of skills and access of young women in Africa to online technology.
In 2023, Iyer stepped down from her role as the executive director of Pollicy, and continues as an advisor and board member.

Honors and awards

  • 2021 Quartz Africa Innovator
  • 2021 Digital Equality Award, Research and Knowledge Builder category, Coalition for Digital Equality
  • 2021–2022 Digital Civil Society Lab Practitioner Fellow, Stanford University