Vallarie Yiega is a tech policy analyst. She currently works as an Advocate Trainee at Bowmans (Coulson Harney LLP), a premier African Law Firm. In 2021, she was a Youth Ambassador at the United Nations (UN) Internet Governance Forum (IGF) held at Katowice, Poland. Part of the IGF was the Global Youth Summit where Vallarie spoke on encryption and capacity building for digital skills. In 2020, she was awarded a Youth Internet Governance fellowship by the Internet Society that led to her appointment by the UN IGF Committee as the Global Youth Representative at the HighLevel Closing Panel session. She was also part of the 10 members Fair Digital Businesses working group convened by the German Informatics Society that gathers young people globally to give their input on various thematic areas ahead of the annual IGF. In 2019, she was a NextGen at Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).
As an
ICANN NextGen, she presented on the impact of the Digital Economy in
poverty alleviation at the ICANN 65 policy conference in Morocco. ICANN
appointed her as the Program Ambassador to mentor 10 NextGen from
Europe and the Asia-Pacific region at the virtual ICANN 68 and ICANN 69
policy conferences. She was also an Africa Network Information Centre
(AFRINIC) fellow. While an AFRINIC 31 Fellow in Angola, she spoke on the
importance of including the youth when determining internet connectivity
and network infrastructure policy in Africa. In 2019, she was a Fellow at the
Kenya School of Internet Governance (KESIG) organized the Kenya ICT
Action Network (KICTANET). In 2018, She was an Ambassador for Digital
Grassroots, a youth led community in charge of building awareness around
digital rights. Vallarie believes in being the woman in the arena and
probably watches too many Korean films.