About

In May 2011, Manal posted a YouTube video of herself driving a car in the city of al-Khober in Saudi Arabia. Not long after, the secret police arrested Manal at two o’clock in the morning from her home and imprisoned her for the crime of “driving while female.” After an international outcry, the king of Saudi Arabia issued her a pardon on the condition of remaining silent.

Despite the conditioned release, Manal continued campaigning against the ban on women driving and male guardianship in her country. The ban was lifted three months after publishing her memoir “Daring to Drive,” making Saudi Arabia the last country where women won this right. For her activism, she was named one of Time’s 100 Most Influential People, Newsweek’s Top Ten Digital Revolutionaries and Forbe’s Top 50 Women in Tech.

Manal is a cyber security expert, the founder of the Ethical Technologists Society, and the host of Tech for Evil Podcast covering topics on the intersection between technology and human rights. Today, Manal lives under self-imposed exile in Australia and calls Sydney her “little piece of heaven.”