Dr. Gurstein is currently Executive Director of the Centre for Community Informatics Research, Development and Training (Vancouver BC), and a Director of The Information Society Institute, Cape Peninsula University of Technology, Cape Town South Africa.

A Canadian, he has a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Cambridge and has been a senior civil servant, established a successful management consulting firm and worked as a management advisor with the UN Secretariat in New York.

Dr. Gurstein has served on the Board of the Vancouver Community Network, the British Columbia Community Networking Association, Telecommunities Canada, and is a Member of the Steering Committee of the Global Telecentre Alliance and on the High Level Advisory Panel of the UN's Global Alliance for ICT4D.

Dr. Gurstein is a leading figure in the development of Community Informatics. A wikipedia entry can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Gurstein