Yolanda Mlonzi

Yolanda Mlonzi is a vibrant and motivated young woman in the field of Internet governance and communications. She started off her career in Internet governance as a Google Policy Fellow for a year where she was hosted at the Association for Progressive Communications (APC). Yolanda is an executive board member of the Internet Society Gauteng chapter, where she is leading the marketing and communications office. She was selected as part of the 2016 Internet Society Ambassadors to the global Internet Governance Forum held in Mexico. Subsequently, was selected to form part of the Youth@IGF Internet Society 2017 Programme. She is also participated at the 2017 Communications Policy Research Youth Scholar programme which took place in Myanmar, where she took part in a policy training programme focusing on information communication technology (ICT) policy research. Overall, Yolanda has been involved in the Internet governance space on local, regional and international levels, where she been a speaker at the last South Africa IG, a resource person for the African School on Internet Governance (3rd & 4th editions) and is currently involved in a number of IG processes. She is passionate about youth participation and engagement, gender rights, human rights, access, and diversity in internet governance.

Yolanda holds a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) degree in International Relations and Media Studies from Witwatersrand University (Wits), where she was awarded the Wits Postgraduate Merit Award for her academic excellence. She conducted a short research study which focused on the growing politicization of intelligence services in constitutional democracies like South Africa, her paper sought to explore the intersection between new media, privacy, surveillance and politics in modern democratic states.