Thor Leonardo Halvorssen Mendoza (born 1976; , locally ) is a Venezuelan human rights advocate and film producer with contributions in the field of public policy, public interest advocacy, individual rights and civil liberties, and pro-democracy advocacy. Halvorssen has been described as a defender of the "underdog and the powerless" while possessing "a burning desire to right the countless injustices of this world" and "does not care if those injustices are being committed by the 'right-wing' or 'left-wing'." Halvorssen is founder of the Oslo Freedom Forum, an annual global human rights conference described by The Economist as "on its way to becoming a human-rights equivalent of the Davos economic forum". Halvorssen is president of the Human Rights Foundation, an organization devoted to global human rights and freedom. He is the Patron of the Czech-based Children's Peace Movement, On Own Feet. Halvorssen bought the traditionally leftist Norwegian news magazine Ny Tid in May 2010. Halvorssen's opinions have appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, National Public Radio, Time magazine, The Nation and National Journal, and he has appeared on television outlets such as al-Jazeera, BBC News, Fox News Channel’s The O'Reilly Factor and Hannity & Colmes, MSNBC’s Hardball with Chris Matthews, CNN, and HBO. Thor Halvorssen was a speaker at TEDx at the University of Pennsylvania in October 2010. Background Halvorssen was born in Venezuela to Hilda Mendoza, a descendant and a relative, respectively, of Venezuela's first president Cristóbal Mendoza and liberator Simón Bolívar. His father is Thor Halvorssen Hellum, who served as a Venezuelan Ambassador for anti-Narcotic Affairs in the administration of Carlos Andrés Pérez and as special overseas investigator of a Venezuelan Senate Commission. His family was prosperous and on his father's side he is the grandson of Øystein Halvorssen, who served as Norway's honorary consul-general in Caracas and who "built a family dynasty as the Venezuelan representative for corporations including Dunlop, Alfa Laval and Ericsson." His cousin is Leopoldo Lopez. a Venezuelan politician, activist, and a political prisoner after called for peaceful protests in February 2014. Halvorssen attended the University of Pennsylvania and graduated Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude, with concurrent undergraduate and graduate degrees in Political Science and History. Father's imprisonment Halvorssen’s father, also named Thor Halvorssen, was a wealthy businessman who was named the CEO of Venezuela's state TV CANTV. In 1989, then-President Carlos Andrés Pérez appointed Halvorssen