Richard Walakira is the Program Manager at the Alliance of Democracies Foundation, where he oversees the foundation’s initiatives on democracy, technology, and entrepreneurship. In this capacity, Richard established and now directs a democracy, technology, and entrepreneurship fellowship program and democracy tech hackathons. The programs equip visionary entrepreneurs with tech solutions to democracies’ problems with the know-how of starting and scaling democratically driven ventures. The Democracy Tech Entrepreneur Fellowship provides critical support to tech entrepreneurs from Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova & Armenia who are in their early stages of developing innovative solutions to solve hard societal problems. Richard also sits on the selection panel for the €15M Google.org Impact Challenge: Strengthening Democracy in Europe. Outside of his professional work, Richard is a rapper. He is known as Bana Mutibwa in Uganda, where he grew up, for utilizing his music to advocate for social and political causes. Last year, Richard was recognized as an Obama Leader by the Obama Foundation.