Contributors

Amarnath Amarasingam is an Assistant Professor in the School of Religion at Queen’s University in Ontario, Canada. He is also a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, and an Associate Fellow at the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation. His research interests are in radicalization, terrorism, diaspora politics, post-war reconstruction, and the sociology of religion. He is the author of Pain, Pride, and Politics: Sri Lankan Tamil Activism in Canada (2015), and the co-editor of Sri Lanka: The Struggle for Peace in the Aftermath of War (2016). He has also written several peer-reviewed articles and book chapters, has presented papers at over 100 national and international conferences, and has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, Politico, The Atlantic, and Foreign Affairs.

Kelly Anguiano (he/any) is a graduating MSW fellow at Columbia University’s SAFELab with a focus on Policy. Entering the program with a Bachelors in Social Work, his work during undergrad was focused on Youth and Education, working in direct practice with Seattle area youth. After moving to New York, his focus narrowed to work with LGBTQ+ youth issues and around housing and homelessness.

Anita Balaraman is a lecturer at the Fung Institute for Engineering Leadership, and an Adjunct Faculty at Carnegie Mellon University teaching technology product management and project management. She is a toxicologist and a technologist, passionate about teaching, and curious about the intersection of the future of work, learning, education, and AI/ML technology. She is a technology product manager with deep experience in building AI/ML products for Walmart Labs, and Cisco Systems. She developed the first quantitative risk-based simulation model for health risk assessment that was implemented by the U.S. Navy.

Christine Bannan is policy counsel at New America’s Open Technology Institute, focusing on platform accountability and privacy. Prior to joining OTI, she worked as consumer protection counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, where she advocated for stronger privacy regulations before federal agencies and Congress. During law school, she interned at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, U.S. Copyright Office, and the Wikimedia Foundation. She is an Internet Law and Policy Foundry Fellow and a Certified Information Privacy Professional (CIPP/US). Bannan earned her J.D. from Notre Dame Law School and B.A. in Classics from the College of the Holy Cross.

Aliya Bhatia is the communications officer at Ranking Digital Rights. Previously, she worked to increase access and reduce disinformation around the 2020 decennial census. She has an MPA from Columbia University and a BA in International Relations and Art History from the University of Toronto.

Patty Pansing Brooks is a state Senator in Nebraska (District 28).

Albert Fox Cahn is the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project’s ( S.T.O.P.’s) founder and executive director, and he is also a fellow at Yale Law School’s Information Society Project, Ashoka, N.Y.U Law School’s Engelberg Center on Innovation Law & Policy, and the Day One Project. As a lawyer, technologist, writer, and interfaith activist, Mr. Cahn began S.T.O.P. in the belief that emerging surveillance technologies pose an unprecedented threat to civil rights and the promise of a free society.

Dr. Elinor Carmi is a Lecturer in Media and Communication at the Sociology Department at City University, London, UK. Currently, she works on two main projects: (1) The Nuffield Foundation project “Developing a Minimum Digital Living Standard”; (2) POST Parliamentary Academic Fellowship working with the UK’s Digital, Culture, Media & Sport Committee on the project she proposed: “Digital literacies for a healthy democracy”. Between 2018-2021 she worked as a Postdoctoral Research Associate on the Nuffield Foundation project – Me and My Big Data: Developing Citizens Data Literacies. During 2020-2021, she was also co-investigator on the UKRI project “COVID-19: Being alone together: developing fake news immunity”. On February 2020, Dr. Carmi was invited to give evidence on Digital Literacy for the House of Lords Committee on Democracy and Digital Technologies.

Joël M. Carter is a Research Associate at the University of Texas at Austin Center for Media Engagement. He holds a Master’s of Global Policy from the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs and investigates issues on data privacy, mass surveillance, and is interested in intellectual property.

Dr. Welton Chang is co-founder and CEO of Pyrra Technologies. Most recently he was the first Chief Technology Officer at Human Rights First and founded HRF’s Innovation Lab. Prior to joining HRF, Welton was a senior researcher at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory where he led teams and developed technical solutions to address disinformation and online propaganda. Before joining APL, Welton served for nearly a decade as an intelligence officer at the Defense Intelligence Agency and in the Army, including two operational tours in Iraq and a tour in South Korea. Welton received a PhD and MA from the University of Pennsylvania, an MA from Georgetown University, and a BA from Dartmouth College.

Jane Chung is Public Citizen’s Big Tech Accountability Advocate. Prior to joining the organization, she worked on Elizabeth Warren’s presidential campaign, and before that, in agricultural development in Rwanda. She started her career at Facebook, which informs her analysis of Big Tech’s power today.

Sara Collins joins Public Knowledge as a Policy Counsel focusing on all things privacy. Previously, Sara was a Policy Counsel on Future of Privacy Forum’s Education & Youth Privacy team and specialized in higher education. She has also worked as an investigations attorney in the Enforcement Unit at Federal Student Aid, as well as the Director of Legal Services for Veterans Education Success. Sara graduated from the Georgetown University Law Center in 2014, where she was the symposium editor of the Journal of Gender and the Law. After graduating law school, she completed a Policy & Law Fellowship at the Amara Legal Center, an organization dedicated to fighting domestic sex trafficking within the DMV area. Originally from Chicago, Sara attended the University of Illinois, where she received a B.A. in both Political Science and English.

Betsy Cooper is Founding Director of the Aspen Tech Policy Hub. Previously, she was the founding Executive Director of the UC Berkeley Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity and was a policy and legal counselor at the Department of Homeland Security. Betsy has a D.Phil from the University of Oxford and graduated from Yale Law School. In her spare time she likes to run experiments to see if her digital devices are listening to her.

Hermelinda Cortés (she/they), Program Director at ReFrame and This Is Signals, is a strategist working at the crossroads of politics, culture, and narrative to build powerful movements toward the liberated world we and future generations deserve.

Shane Creevy has been working at the forefront of social journalism for over a decade. He spent eight years at Storyful as a journalist and led its video business as Global Video Editor. As the Head of Editorial at Kinzen, he provides oversight of the company’s content services and its unique approach to Natural Language Processing.

Eno Darwka is a MSW Fellow at the SAFELab at Columbia University. She holds a BS in Social Work from New York University.  Her career goal is to utilize skills and knowledge gained from her academic background and experiences to collaborate with communities and national agencies through education and research to design tailored approach and policies specific to individual communities to combat social issues such as child sexual abuse with the aim of protecting and rehabilitating victims.

Renée DiResta is the Research Manager at the Stanford Internet Observatory. She investigates the spread of malign narratives across social networks, and assists policymakers in understanding and responding to the problem. She has advised Congress, the State Department, and other academic, civic, and business organizations, and has studied disinformation and computational propaganda in the context of pseudoscience conspiracies, terrorism, and state-sponsored information warfare.

Alex C. Engler is a Fellow at the Brookings Institution and an Associate Fellow at the Center for European Policy Studies, where he examines the societal and policy implications of artificial intelligence. Previously faculty at the University of Chicago, Engler now teaches AI policy at Georgetown University, where he is an adjunct professor and affiliated scholar. Engler also has a decade of experience as a data scientist in policy organizations.

Willmary Escoto is a U.S. Policy Analyst for Access Now where she works on issues around content governance, privacy, artificial intelligence, and data protection. She previously served as the Director of Policy and Government Affairs for the National Hispanic Media Coalition and was hosted by Public Knowledge as a Google Policy Fellow in 2016. Willmary received her J.D. from Howard University and is licensed to practice law in Washington D.C.

E.J. Fagan is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Neil Fried launched DigitalFrontiers Advocacy in January 2020, bringing more than 25 years of experience in the public and private sectors, and testified before Congress on section 230 reform in June of that year. From 2013 to 2020, Neil was senior vice president for congressional and regulatory affairs at the Motion Picture Association. He joined the MPA in 2013 from the House Energy & Commerce Committee, where he served as counsel and ultimately chief counsel on media and technology law issues for close to 10 years. Prior to working on the Hill, Neil represented clients before Congress and the Federal Communications Commission while at the D.C. offices of two law firms: Verner, Liipfert, Bernhard, McPherson and Hand; and Paul Hastings. He helped implement the 1996 Telecommunications Act as an attorney with the FCC from 1996 to 2000. Before coming to the FCC, he was a John S. and James L. Knight Foundation law fellow at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.

Dipayan Ghosh is co-director of the Digital Platforms & Democracy Project at the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government at the Harvard Kennedy School, and author of Terms of Disservice (2020). He was a technology and economic policy advisor in the Obama White House, and formerly served as an advisor on privacy and public policy issues at Facebook.

Alexandra Reeve Givens is the President and CEO of the Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT), a nonpartisan nonprofit that advocates for protecting democracy and human rights in the digital age.

Ellen P. Goodman is a Professor at Rutgers Law School, Co-Director of the Rutgers Institute for Information Policy & Law (RIIPL), and a Senior Fellow at the Digital Innovation & Democracy Institute at the German Marshall Fund.

Anastasia Goodwin is a research assistant with the propaganda team at the Center for Media Engagement (CME) at UT Austin. She is studying journalism at Moody College of Communication.

John Graham is a student at Harvard Law School where he serves as Co-President of the Antitrust Association. He most recently worked in the Antitrust Unit at the California Department of Justice. Before law school, John served as Sullivan & Cromwell’s first Antitrust Legal Assistant.

Evan Greer is an activist, musician, and writer based in Boston. She’s the deputy director of Fight for the Future, the viral digital rights group known for organizing the largest online protests in human history, and releases music on Don Giovanni Records and Get Better Records. She’s based in Boston, and writes regularly for outlets like the Washington Post, NBC News, Wired, Buzzfeed, Time, and Newsweek. Follow her on Twitter @evan_greer.

Yiqing Hua is a Computer Science PhD candidate at Cornell Tech. Her work focuses on understanding and mitigating threats to online trust and safety.

Gus Hurwitz is Associate Professor of Law and Menards Director of the Nebraska Governance & Technology Center and Director of Law & Economics Programs at the International Center for Law and Economics.

Joseph Jerome is a privacy attorney in Washington, D.C., working on immersive technologies. He previously worked on state advocacy efforts at the Center for Democracy & Technology and Common Sense. He was also policy counsel at the Future of Privacy Forum and an associate in the privacy and cybersecurity practice at WilmerHale. Joseph has a J.D. from the New York University School of Law, where he was an International Law and Human Rights Student Fellow.

Michael Khoo is climate disinformation program director at Friends of the Earth and co-founder of UpShift Strategies. He has led research projects on how climate disinformation networks merged with Q-Anon, documented how Facebook and Twitter spread climate disinformation during the Texas blackout, helped the social media platform Pinterest develop its climate disinformation policy, and worked with a coalition he co-directs to document climate disinformation at the U.N. Climate Change Conference COP26.

Shana Kleiner is a current MSW candidate in advanced generalist practice and programming at Columbia University. She is a recent graduate from Skidmore College, where she earned her BSW, and is especially interested in restorative justice dialogue and community building. Shana has experience researching mother activism, elder self-neglect, and homelessness. This past summer, she was a fellow with the MDOCS Storytellers’ Institute, and worked with other artists, writers, and filmmakers surrounding the notion of co-creation.

Zachey Kliger is an MPA candidate at Columbia’s School of International Affairs studying social policy and technology. Before starting at SIPA, Zachey worked at two brand consulting firms, conducting original research on the drivers of corporate reputation, and partnering with small businesses to execute digital marketing strategies. In 2019, the widening scope of our global political crises—from stark economic inequality to the rise of far-right populism— inspired Zachey to leave his job in the private sector to join Elizabeth Warren’s presidential campaign. Zachey holds a B.A. in sociology from Tufts University.

Claire Leibowicz is the Head of AI and Media Integrity at the Partnership on AI, where she has worked since the organization’s inception. Under Claire’s leadership, the AI and Media Integrity program works with stakeholders from civil society, media, academia, and industry to investigate emerging AI technology’s impact on digital media and online information. Claire holds a BA in Psychology and Computer Science from Harvard, and a master’s degree in the Social Science of the Internet from Balliol College, Oxford where she studied as a Clarendon Scholar.

Nathalie Maréchal is the Senior Policy and Partnerships Manager at Ranking Digital Rights. She leads the development of RDR’s policy positions, coordinates stakeholder engagement and partnerships, and publicly represents RDR with the media and at conferences around the world. Fluent in French and Spanish, Maréchal is a frequent speaker at digital rights events and academic conferences. Her work has been published by the International Journal of Communication, the Global Commission on Internet Governance, Media and Communication, Motherboard, and Slate. She holds a PhD in communication from the Annenberg School at the University of Southern California, an MA in international communication from the School of International Service at American University, and a BA in international studies, also from AU. Maréchal lives in Washington, D.C.

Dr. Siva Mathiyazhagan is the Associate Director of Strategies and Impact at the SAFELab, Columbia University. He strategies and facilitates local-global partnerships to scale SAFELab innovations and research projects to accelerate the impact with local communities and transnational tech-social work researchers. Dr. Siva Mathiyazhagan is the Founder-Director of the youth-led non-profit Trust for Youth and Child Leadership (TYCL) International, based in India and the USA. He serves as a TYCL representative to the United Nations. He is an independent global social work researcher and development consultant.  He has a Masters in Social Work (MSW) and a PhD. in Social Work, specialized in child-centered community development from Pondicherry Central University, India.

Chloe Maxmin is a state Senator in Maine (D-13 and co-chair of the state’s Broadband Caucus).

Aviv Ovadya is a Technology and Public Purpose fellow at Harvard’s Belfer Center, founder of the Thoughtful Technology Project, and a non-resident fellow at GMF’s Alliance for Securing Democracy. His work focuses on the societal impacts of emerging technologies, particularly online platforms and artificial intelligence. Aviv received BS and MEng degrees in computer science from MIT, worked in a wide variety of industry product roles, and served as Chief Technologist at the Center for Social Media Responsibility at the University of Michigan. He has written for the Washington Post, HBR, MIT Technology Review, and Bloomberg; his work has been covered regularly, including by the BBC, NPR, the Economist, WIRED, and the New York Times.

Associate Professor Desmond Upton Patton is a Public Interest Technologist who uses qualitative and computational data collection methods to examine the relationship between youth and gang violence and social media; how and why violence, grief, and identity are expressed on social media; and the real world impact these expressions have on wellbeing for low-income youth of color. Dr. Patton is the founding Director of the SAFE lab, a member of the Data Science Institute, a faculty affiliate of the Social Intervention Group (SIG) and holds a courtesy appointment in the department of Sociology. He is the recipient of the 2018 Deborah K. Padgett Early Career Achievement Award from the Society for Social Work Research (SSWR), and was named a 2017-2018 Fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society.

Kayvon Paul is a JD Candidate at Rutgers Law School and Associate Editor of the Rutgers Computer and Technology Law Journal.

Gretchen Peters is Executive Director of the Alliance to Counter Crime Online. She also conducts complex research and investigations into organized crime, fraud and corruption.

Joseph Phelan, Co-Founder and Executive Director of ReFrame, is a creative strategist grounded in social movements working toward liberation for all people and the planet.

Richard Reisman is a Nonresident Senior Fellow at Lincoln Network, media-tech innovator, and frequent contributor to Tech Policy Press. He blogs on human-centered digital services and related tech policy at SmartlyIntertwingled.com, and his work was recently cited in an FTC Report to Congress on Combating Online Harms. His book, FairPay: Adaptively Win-Win Customer Relationships, and related blog, FairPayZone.com, introduce new customer-value-first revenue strategies for digital services that were described in Harvard Business Review. He has managed and consulted for businesses of all sizes, developed pioneering online services, and holds over 50 media-tech patents licensed by over 200 companies to serve billions of users.

Chris is senior fellow for internet governance at the R Street Institute and a Distinguished Research Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Public Policy Center. He has worked on tech policy in D.C. and San Francisco for nonprofit and public sector employers and managed teams based in those cities as well as Brussels, New Delhi, London, and Nairobi. Chris earned his PhD from Johns Hopkins University and a law degree from Yale Law School.

Sarah T. Roberts, Ph.D., is Associate Professor and Co-Director of the UCLA Center for Critical Internet Inquiry. She the author of Behind the Screen: Content Moderation in the Shadows of Social Media, published by Yale University Press in 2019.

Jon Steinman is a former Bloomberg News reporter and cybersecurity startup co-founder who is now a communicator at Protect Democracy, a nonpartisan nonprofit dedicated to repairing and strengthening American democracy.

Padmashree is a leading expert on trade policy, innovation policy, and economic development. She is also an Adjunct Professor at the Department of Social Sciences, University of Aalborg, Denmark and a Professorial Fellow at the United Nations University-MERIT.

Justin Sherman is a senior fellow at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy and runs its data brokerage research project. He is also a contributor at WIRED Magazine and has written for The Atlantic, Foreign Policy, Slate, and The Washington Post.

Jen Soriano, Co-Founder of ReFrame and MediaJustice, is a writer and nonprofit consultant who has spent twenty years doing cultural and political work to shift narratives toward justice.

Elizabeth founded The Insurrection in 2016. She is a new media expert and entrepreneur and veteran journalist. She was previously the Editor in Chief of The New York Observer and Editorial Director of Observer Media Group. Before that, she was the founder of Breaking Media (which publishes Dealbreaker, AboveTheLaw and Fashionista) and was the founding editor of Gawker, the flagship site of Gawker Media. She has launched a variety of digital properties and products for brands, media companies, and agencies. She is also a former financial columnist at Fortune, and writes about politics for a number of outlets, including the Washington Post. She also teaches in NYU’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute in the Studio 20 program led by Jay Rosen, and is a Young Leaders Forum Fellow with the National Committee on United States-China Relations. She was named one of Fast Company’s Most Influential Women in Technology, and also serves or has served on the advisory boards of Flavorpill Media, Counsyl, OfAKind, Selfie, Wall Street Cheat Sheet, and Clade.

Jonathan Stray is a Senior Scientist at the Center for Human Compatible AI at UC Berkeley, where he works on the design of recommender systems for better personalized news and information. He teaches the dual masters degree in computer science and journalism at Columbia University, and previously worked as an editor at the Associated Press and a research scientist in the tech industry.

Samara Trilling (she/her) is a software engineer at Justfix.nyc and a policy technologist working on algorithmic regulation, anti-monopoly policy, and tech labor law. As a fellow at the Aspen Tech Policy Hub, Samara wrote policy recommendations for machine learning regulation. Previously, Samara built software at Sidewalk Labs and Google. Samara has a degree in computer science from Columbia University with a specialization in artificial intelligence. Samara loves hiking, books on the history of computing, and planning her land cooperative.

Dr. Rebekah Tromble is Associate Professor in the School of Media and Public Affairs and Director of the Institute for Data, Democracy, and Politics (IDDP) at George Washington University. She recently joined George Washington University after spending eight years in the Institute of Political Science at Leiden University in the Netherlands. Dr. Tromble’s research focuses on political communication, digital research methodology, and research ethics. She is particularly interested in political discourse on social media, as well as the spread and impact of online misinformation. Her research has been published in leading journals such as New Media & Society, International Studies Quarterly, and Political Communication.

Elizabeth Tyson co-leads strategy and prototype design, conducts research and builds partnerships at the Open Environmental Data Project. She is curious about the intersection of participatory governance and innovation methods for advancing environmental protection, natural resource governance/conservation, and basic scientific research. Elizabeth is a former Co-Director of the Commons Lab at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, a National Geographic Innovation Labs Fellow/Explorer, and a former Professional Fellow with the State Department National Committee on U.S.-China Relations.

Dr. Samuel Woolley is a writer and researcher. He is an assistant professor in the School of Journalism and in the School of Information (by courtesy) at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the program director of propaganda research at the Center for Media Engagement at UT. Woolley’s work focuses on the ways in which emerging technology are leveraged for both democracy and control. He is the author of the book “The Reality Game: How the Next Wave of Technology Will Break the Truth” (PublicAffairs), an exploration of how tools from artificial intelligence to virtual reality are being used in efforts to manipulate public opinion and discusses what society can do to respond. He is the co-editor (with Dr. Philip N. Howard), of the book “Computational Propaganda” (Oxford University Press), a series of country-based case studies on social media and digital information operations. His academic and policy work has been published by a number of peer-reviewed journals and NGOs including The Journal of Information, Technology, and Policy, The International Journal of Communication, The National Endowment for Democracy, and the Stanford Hoover Institution. His public writing on politics, propaganda and social media has appeared in Foreign Affairs, the Guardian, Wired, and the Atlantic. His research has been covered by in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Financial Times, and on BBC News at Ten, NBC Nightly News and Bloomberg Technology. Woolley is a research affiliate at the Project on Democracy and the Internet at Stanford University. He is the former director of Research of the Computational Propaganda Project at University and the Founding Director of the Digital Intelligence Lab at the Institute for the Future in Palo Alto, CA. He is a former fellow at the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the German Marshall Fund of the United States, Google Jigsaw, the Tech Policy Lab, and the Center for Media, Data and Society at Central European University. His PhD is from the University of Washington. He tweets from @samuelwoolley.

Steven Vosloo is the Digital Policy Specialist in the Office of Global Insight and Policy at UNICEF. He is the lead for UNICEF’s Artificial Intelligence for Children Policy project. His focus areas are AI and child rights, digital literacy and skills.

Jillian C. York is a writer and activist whose work examines the impact of technology on our societal and cultural values. Based in Berlin, she is the Director for International Freedom of Expression at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a fellow at the Center for Internet & Human Rights at the European University Viadrina, a visiting professor at the College of Europe Natolin, and the author of Silicon Values: The Future of Free Speech Under Surveillance Capitalism.