Meet the CrownShy team driving Civic Tech Innovation

At CrownShy, we've come together as an international team of experts at the intersection of deliberative democracy, civic tech, and data science. Our team members are acknowledged leaders who have pioneered platforms and processes like Polis, vTaiwan, Zooniverse, and Citizens’ Assemblies.

This blend of technical and social design expertise spanning machine learning, open source collective intelligence, and large-scale public facilitation makes us uniquely suited to build next-generation democratic tools. This blogpost takes a look at our core team, how their experience drives CrownShy and, at the end, our team growth plans for the near future.

Dr. Stuart Lynn – Co-founder & CTO

Stuart is CrownShy’s Chief Technology Officer, and the person holding the long-term vision for our technology. More than just managing the roadmap, Stuart sees what’s possible for Comhairle, our participation platform, and is driving the project of making that vision real. His developing codebase is what underpins the platform, ensuring it can connect and integrate the best open source democratic tools available.

Day to day, Stuart leads the platform development and guides our work with partners, setting priorities, steering iteration cycles, and ensuring that technical decisions stay aligned with our democratic values. He also steers our partnership with the Scottish Government, translating their ambition for high-quality digital engagement into a concrete, scalable platform.

Stuart is a Scottish technologist and his background uniquely positions him at the crossroads of technology and civic life. After earning his PhD in astrophysics from the University of Edinburgh, he turned his skills toward citizen participation – first as technical lead of the Zooniverse, the world’s largest online citizen science platform, then as a data science leader at CARTO in New York and the Alan Turing Institute in London.

After making big impacts abroad, he’s now turning his talents back to Scotland – and is already making waves. Under Stuart’s technical leadership, CrownShy recently secured a Scottish Government contract to develop and test civic tech tools. Stuart is driven by a passion to enhance the civic fabric of his home and beyond, ensuring our technology empowers communities at scale while remaining transparent, ethical and human-centered.

Liz Barry – Co-founder & CEO

Liz is CrownShy’s CEO, stewarding our vision and growing our partnerships. She speaks worldwide on democratic innovation and ensures CrownShy remains values-driven as we grow. With over a decade of experience in digital democracy and “listening at scale,” Liz has worked in 25+ countries helping communities, movements, and governments adopt new participation methods.

Previously, she served as Head of Partnerships at The Computational Democracy Project, the nonprofit she co-founded with the creators of Polis to steward the open source code and methods. Her involvement with Polis dates back to witnessing Taiwan’s 2014 Sunflower Movement and the rise of vTaiwan (the groundbreaking digital consultation process), which she was the first to document for Western audiences.

Liz’s approach to public engagement is both innovative and hands-on. Years before “civic tech” was a thing, she literally invited dialogue by sitting on sidewalks in New York City and around the continental United States with a “Talk To Me” sign and two lawn chairs, listening to hundreds of strangers share their thoughts and encouraging people to listen to each other. This project honed her large-scale facilitation skills and exemplifies the ethos of inclusive listening that she brings to CrownShy. In addition, Liz co-founded civic initiatives like Public Lab (a worldwide community for open environmental science) and TreeKIT (a citizen mapping project for every tree on every sidewalk in New York City) that each grew to thousands of contributors, reflecting her passion for empowering citizens through technology and data and novel organizational structures.

She is also the Executive Director at Metagov, a laboratory for digital governance. Metagov develops tools, standards, and practices that empower self-governance in the digital age—from open-source software to online communities to global infrastructure. At CrownShy, Liz ensures that we balance stability with experimentation, keeping us grounded in our mission as we expand to new regions and projects.

Shu-Yang Lin – Head of Design (UX/UI)

Shu leads CrownShy’s design vision, overseeing user experience (UX) and user interface (UI) design. Her mission is to make complex democratic processes feel accessible and engaging for everyone. Shu works closely with our engineers and facilitators to translate deliberative workflows into intuitive features on the Comhairle platform, effectively turning policy engagement best practices into usable digital tools. She also guides our visual brand and conducts user testing to continuously improve accessibility and inclusivity. With a background at the intersection of technology and civic process, Shu ensures that human-centered design and ethical considerations are baked into CrownShy’s platform.

Before joining CrownShy, Shu-Yang was already a prominent figure in digital democracy innovation. She was a founding staff member and co-lead of the Taiwanese government’s Public Digital Innovation Space (PDIS) – an open government innovation lab she established alongside Digital Minister Audrey Tang. At PDIS, Shu spearheaded pioneering projects like vTaiwan, an open consultation process that blended online polling (using Polis) with in-person deliberation to find consensus on policy issues. She helped set up a network of participation officers across ministries and facilitated over 100 deliberative workshops inside government, connecting citizens with policymakers.

Shu later brought her expertise to the international stage: in the UK, she became an interaction designer at the AI Objectives Institute, where she supported the creation of “Talk to the City,” an open source tool leveraging large language models (LLMs) to analyse rich public input from town halls, surveys, and discussions.

Shu also contributed to Recursive Public, a project on democratic governance of AI that won a major OpenAI grant, and she actively links communities of practice between Asia and Europe. At CrownShy, Shu-Yang ensures that our platform’s design not only looks good but also empowers users – facilitators, officials, and participants alike – to engage in meaningful dialogue without barriers.

Andy Paice – Head of Engagement & Facilitation

Andy rounds out the CrownShy team as our lead on public participation and facilitation. He serves as the bridge between cutting-edge digital tools and real-world democratic practice. Andy makes sure that the Comhairle platform aligns with what works on the ground: he incorporates proven facilitation methods, advises on process design, and develops training materials so that our partners can seamlessly blend in-person and online engagement. Andy’s input helps ensure that CrownShy’s technology is used in an inclusive, legitimate, and human-centered way. He’s translating the needs of facilitators and communities to our tech team (and vice versa) so that the platform augments deliberation rather than complicating it.

Andy has also worked with leading participation organisations in the UK and brings years of experience in facilitating and designing deliberative processes including fifteen UK based mini-publics (citizens’ assemblies, juries and panels). His expertise includes integrating digital participation with face-to-face methods, a “mini-public meets maxi-public” approach. In 2022 he advised the set up of the Austrian Climate Assembly’s use of Polis connecting thousands of citizens in climate policy dialogue, showcasing how digital tools can amplify a citizens’ assembly’s impact.

Beyond his on-the-ground work, Andy contributes thought leadership in the field – he is President of the Board of the Co-Intelligence Institute and writes about wise democracy practices. Through all these experiences, he has developed an intuitive sense of what good deliberation requires: inclusive outreach, clear information, attentive facilitation, and closing the feedback loop with decision-makers. This insight directly informs CrownShy’s platform design. Andy’s presence ensures that as we innovate with AI and software, we never lose sight of the human element and democratic principles that make participation meaningful.

Growing the team

From this strong foundation, we’re excited to grow our team to meet new opportunities on the horizon. We plan to hire two software developers (front-end and back-end engineers are already being sought) and a UX designer to accelerate development, iterate faster on platform features, and support engagements from 1,000 to 100,000 participants. This growth reflects our long-term vision of using high-quality public dialogue and collective intelligence to inform decision-making at all levels. If you’re interested please do get in touch or share with anyone who you think could be a good fit for our team!