Disclosure Statement
Last Updated November 8, 2024
I offer this disclosure statement in order to be clear about my significant professional affiliations and financial engagements, and the principles behind how I choose to fund and pursue my work. This is not intended as a comprehensive disclosure of all past and present affiliations and personal relationships tied to my work, but is rather a map of the influences that I feel have a material influence on my current professional obligations.
My primary professional identity is as an academic researcher, writer, and speaker. Unlike most university professors, my work has been funded primarily by grants, and secondarily by commercial consulting, investments, and speaking engagements. I do not make my living off of teaching and university administration, but rather as a full time researcher funded by “soft money” grants. I have never held a traditional faculty appointment or a tenure-track or tenured “permanent” faculty position. This has meant that my work tends to be centered on topics of interest to philanthropy, policymakers, educational organizations, and technology developers. This has also has also meant that I have had the freedom to pursue and publish work that is not tied to the accountabilities of getting tenure and promotions within established fields and academic assessments.
My current institutional affiliations are:
- Professor in Residence, Department of Informatics, School of Information and Computer Science, University of California, Irvine
- Director of the Connected Learning Lab, a cross-campus research institute at the University of California, Irvine
- Co-Founder and CEO of the nonprofit Connected Camps which also does business as the Connected Learning Alliance
Grants and research funding
Current and past sources of research and programmatic funding include (in alphabetical order):
- Abe Fellowship Program at the Social Science Research Council
- Aphorism Foundation
- Association for Asian Studies Northeast Asia Council
- Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
- Chiba Institute of Technology
- Google University Relations
- Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation
- Intel Research
- Japan Society for the Promotion of Science
- John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
- Mellon Foundation
- National Science Foundation
- NTT DoCoMo
- Phi Beta Kappa Northern California Society
- Pivotal Ventures
- Roadtrip Nation
- Samueli Foundation
- Siegal Family Endowment
- Spencer Foundation
- STEM Next
- Strada Collaborative
- Reischauer Institute
- Vodaphone Group Foundation
Whether from governmental, corporate, or philanthropic sources, all of these grants and fellowships have supported research where I have had control of the research agenda and intellectual property. The funding entities have had influence to the degree that they are able to select and in some cases shape the proposed research agenda, but they have not had any rights to review or influence the outcomes or publications resulting from the research.
Commercial engagements
In addition to research funding, I also do commercial consulting and speaking engagements. I give my time freely to many academic and public sector groups, but I believe that commercial entities should provide appropriate compensation for scholarly consulting and speaking. I also do not engage in commercial speaking and consulting activity that involves making any of my primary and grant-funded research proprietary to a commercial entity (with the exception of publishers). In other words, I do not believe in transferring philanthropically or government funded intellectual property to private commercial entities. I do not feel that any of my commercial engagements influence whether I will speak out for or against a particular company or product. I advise companies building products and content related to learning and youth development, but I do not endorse products that are directly related to my area of research. If I do feel like there is an influence, I will note this at the time of speaking or publication.
This web site and publications
This is a personal web site that is not affiliated with the academic institutions or funding agencies that I am currently or formerly affiliated with. Occasionally I will post on this site or social media to promote the activities or publications of others who I want to support personally or professionally. When I am promoting an entity that I have a direct financial interest in or that I support financially I will note this fact. In my publications, I note the funding sources for the work in the acknowledgments section.
Family and friends
I am blessed to have close family and friends who share my professional interests and vision of social change. In particular, my brother, Joi Ito, and husband, Scott Fisher, work in closely allied areas, and we on occasion engage in shared projects and events when there is a principled reason to do so. I fully acknowledge that these and other personal relationships have been hugely enabling of my work and provide indispensable support and motivation to keep me going. At the same time, I am highly committed to professional standards of research integrity that insist that my analysis and findings are independent of these personal relationships.