Joichi Ito is director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab. He is chair of Creative Commons, on the board of the MacArthur Foundation, on the board of trustees of the Knight Foundation, and co-founder and board member of Digital Garage, an Internet company in Japan. He is a member of the IT Strategic Headquarters of the Japanese cabinet. He has created numerous Internet companies, and was an early-stage investor in Twitter, Kickstarter, and Path, among others. In 2011, Ito was chosen by Nikkei Business magazine as one of the 100 most influential people for the future of Japan and by Foreign Policy magazine as one of the Top 100 Global Thinkers, and he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Oxford Internet Institute in recognition of his role as one of the world’s leading advocates of Internet freedom. He is a board member of The New York Times Company.