Mitchell Kapor

Mitch Kapor is a startup investor, philanthropist, and entrepreneur. He founded Lotus Development Corporation in 1982 and designed Lotus 1-2-3, the "killer app" which made the PC ubiquitous in business. In 1997, he established the Mitchell Kapor Foundation, a private foundation that works to ensure fairness and equity, particularly for low-income communities of color. He is a co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which defends free speech, privacy, innovation, and consumer rights in the digital realm. He is also the founding Chair of the Mozilla Foundation , creator of the Firefox web browser.

In 1997, Mr. Kapor endowed the Mitchell Kapor Foundation, a private foundation which works to ensure fairness and equity, particularly for low-income communities of color. Current areas of focus for the foundation include building sustainable communities, affording greater access to college education for young African-American males, and protecting the integrity of the electoral process.

Since 2001, Mr. Kapor has been a director and major funder of the Level Playing Field Institute, which works to increase fairness in education and the workplace by closing the opportunity gap and removing barriers to success. LPFI operates the Summer Math and Science Honors Academy (SMASH) to prepare students from underrepresented communities to be competitive in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) related studies at top universities.

Mr. Kapor worked with the 2008 Obama campaign and transition team in the area of technology and technology policy. He contributed to the work creating of a position for a federal Chief Technology Officer. He worked with senior officials in the administration including former CTO Aneesh Chopra on information technology policy issues, especially healthcare IT.

Mr. Kapor is a board member of the non-profit organization Commonsense Media, the nation's leading independent non-profit advocating for children. He also serves on the advisory boards of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (defending free speech, privacy, innovation, and consumer rights on the Internet), the Sunlight Foundation (improving access to government information), and the Wikimedia Foundation (Wikipedia and other free content projects).