Mishi Choudhary, a technology lawyer and an online civil liberties activist with law practice in New York and New Delhi. She currently serves as Senior Vice President and General Counsel at Virtru, a global data encryption and digital privacy provider. With over 17 years of legal experience, Mishi has served as a legal representative for many of the world’s most prominent free and open source software developers and distributors, including the Free Software Foundation, Cloud Native Computing Foundation, Linux Foundation, Debian, the Apache Software Foundation, and OpenSSL. The Open magazine called her an emerging legal guardian of the free and open internet.

In 2010, she founded SFLC.in. She served as its President and Executive Director until 2017. Under her direction, SFLC.in has become the premier non-profit organization representing the rights of Internet users and free software developers in India. One of the lead counsels for Mouthshut.com, a writ petition challenging online free speech and intermediary liability, Mishi Choudhary helped win the Shreya Singhal vs Union of India case in which the Supreme Court delivered a landmark verdict, ruling Section 66A of the Information Technology Act as unconstitutional. She was also part of the coalition that worked on the Network Neutrality campaign in India that put a stop to Freebasics by Facebook in India. Recently, SFLC.in members were petitioners in the landmark unanimous judgment delivered by the Indian Supreme Court holding the Right to privacy as a fundamental right.

As of 2017, Mishi was the only lawyer in the world to simultaneously appear on briefs in the US and Indian Supreme Courts in the same term. In 2015, she was named one of the Asia Society’s 21 young leaders building Asia’s future. In 2016, she was inducted into the Aspen Global Leadership Network by the Aspen Institute. She advises Columbia University’s Global Freedom of Expression project and serves on the Board of IFEX and Global Network Initiative.

In addition to an LLM from Columbia Law School, she has an LLB degree and a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of Delhi. Mishi is a member of the Bar Council of Delhi, licensed to appear before the Supreme Court of India, all the State High Courts in India, in the State of New York, and before the Southern District of New York.