BOARD ADVISORS
Tarquin Folliss, OBE
Tarquin Folliss is a former army officer and senior British diplomat with over 30 years government service focused on national security. He served overseas in Europe, the Middle East and Asia Pacific. He has a wide experience of intelligence and security policy, specifically in the areas of information fusion, collaboration and deliver of effects.
Since leaving government service he has worked in the UK tech sector holding appointments with commercial companies involved in cyber security. He was co-founder of Othrys Ltd, an ethical international security consultancy that continues to provide strategic advice to organisations in the private and public sector, both in the UK and overseas. He is a thought leader on cyber security with a specific focus on the human dimension and has led discussions on the impact and safe adoption of emerging technology.
Michael Coates
​Michael Coates is the Founder and Managing Partner of Seven Hill Ventures. Previously he served as CISO at Twitter and Head of Security for Mozilla. As an entrepreneur, Michael co-founded and served as CEO of Altitude Networks, a pioneering cloud data security company, acquired by CoinList in 2022. Following the acquisition, Michael served as CISO and COO at CoinList earlier in his career.
Michael led product security at Shape Security, later acquired in a $1 billion transaction. Michael also served as Chairman of the OWASP Foundation, the world’s largest nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing application security, with chapters in more than 100 countries.
Desigan Chinniah
Desigan Chinniah is a Venture Partner at Mozilla Ventures and Ventures Platform, and a mentor at Madica. Previously, he was a senior leader at Mozilla and co-created Grant for the Web, a $100M fund supporting open web monetization and the Interledger Protocol.
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As an early-stage investor and advisor, Desigan has backed more than 50 companies, including Light Phone and AltSchool Africa. His portfolio includes companies acquired by Sonos, Flip, Bryan Johnson, and the Linux Foundation.
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Desigan serves on the Board of Directors of The Tor Project and on the Technology Advisory Board of Our Future Health. He is also an advisor to the Interledger Foundation, Zama, TigerBeetle, and Cloaked, and previously served as Board Chair of Ushahidi.