The Wiki-Praxis Institute is a non-profit organization based in Springfield, Illinois. It was established in 2025 as a successor to an earlier non-profit (the Kybernan Foundation). A search of the Illinois Secretary of State’s records will confirm that this earlier organization was founded on June 15, 2015. By sheer coincidence, this was one day before Donald Trump launched his initial presidential campaign. This should demonstrate that our work is not intended as a response to our current political moment, but rather meant to address longstanding issues in our democracy.

Our president, Michael Bermingham, received his bachelor’s degree in Political Science from the University of Illinois at Springfield in 2012, and spent much of the last decade studying how people discuss politics on existing social media platforms. The often chaotic nature of these discussions informed the design of our new platform. A paper laying out the theories behind the platform can be read here.

Our chief technology officer, Kurt Kremitzki, received his master’s degree in Computer Science from the University of Illinois at Springfield in 2025.