2020 Assembly Fellowship
Cohort Members
The 2020 Assembly Fellowship gathers a competitively-selected cohort of individuals who work primarily in the private sector, as well as governments and non-profits, to explore emerging problems related to disinformation from a cybersecurity perspective. To allow each fellow to fully engage in their project, each fellow participates as an individual, not as a representative of their organization.
EC
EC currently works on the Trust & Safety team at YouTube helping to set policy for the platform. They previously worked in civil society.
RAFIQ COPELAND
Rafiq is a Project Director and Humanitarian Advisor for Internews, focusing on disinformation and dangerous speech. Most recently based in Myanmar, he works with civil society groups in countries affected by manipulation of social media and explores how to measure the performance of digital platforms in meeting their own standards for content moderation and working towards greater accountability for platform users, particularly in contexts with limited freedom of expression. Rafiq has worked to increase access to information and communication channels for marginalized communities, including in Kenya, Somalia, the Philippines, Cambodia, Bangladesh and South Sudan. Through increased communication and transparency, Rafiq has worked to increase accountability to affected populations in humanitarian emergencies.
MAGGIE ENGLER
Maggie is a technologist and researcher focused on applying statistics and machine learning to mitigate abuses in the online ecosystem, including disinformation, harassment, and fraud. She is currently the lead data scientist at Global Disinformation Index (GDI), a nonprofit that aims to disrupt the business model of disinformation through detection and demonetization. Prior to GDI, Maggie spent several years in cybersecurity, most recently working on identifying anomalous login attempts at Duo Security. She has worked on a range of information security problems including malware classification and risk assessment in both the private and public sectors. Maggie holds a B.S. and an M.S. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University, with a concentration in signal processing and a Notation in Science Communication with distinction.
JENNY FAN
Jenny is a designer, technologist, and generally curious person interested in interdisciplinary approaches for reimagining the relationship between technology and society, particularly regarding social infrastructure and information ecosystems. Her work focuses on designing for complex sociotechnical systems ranging from data integration platforms to cyberspeech regulation and platform governance. She recently published a paper on digital juries and civics-oriented approaches to platform governance. She currently works as a Product Designer for Palantir, and has worked on technology strategy and UI/UX design for IDEO, Accenture, and a number of Series A start-ups in NYC. She holds an MDE from Harvard’s Graduate School of Design and School of Engineering and Applied Sciences -- where she was a student in first iteration of the Assembly Student Fellowship -- and a BS in Economics (Information Management) from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton school.
OLYA GUREVICH
Olya is currently the Chief Scientist at Marvelous AI’ and leads its research efforts in natural language processing. She is excited to apply her background in cognitive linguistics with her technical expertise in order to combat misinformation. Olya is a veteran of several startups (Powerset, Topsy) and large tech companies (Microsoft, Apple), where she held a variety of technical contributor and leadership roles. She received her PhD in Linguistics from UC Berkeley.
GULSIN HARMAN
Gülsin Harman is a Turkish journalist and current Fellow at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. As a Nieman Fellow, she is studying how new challenges to journalism impact democracy, with a focus on the link between disinformation and distrust of media in society and how that fosters political apathy. In 2016, she researched online harassment of local journalists in forms of organized disinformation campaigns. Most recently, she worked for The New York Times Istanbul Bureau, where she has contributed to coverage of Turkey since 2017.
JOHN HESS
Currently a Technical Program Manager at Google, John is an engineer, product manager, data scientist, and policy wonk. He's worked in education at edX and Google, in healthcare policy studying PTSD in the US military as a systems problem, in flight test, and other domains. This has fairly been characterized as "scattered," but he prefers to characterize it as being a "mad scientist" (the good kind of mad). His current interests are how we come to trust one another in the online sphere, the influence of the built environment on community, and professional ethics as they relate to design, security, and privacy. John loves to learn and teach, and has most recently learned to fly and taught at Google's Computer Science Summer Institute.
TANAY JAEEL
Tanay is a technologist and policy nerd interested in how truth, security, and democracy are evolving in the age of the internet. He is currently a Product Manager at Google’s Next Billion Users incubator, scaling fast and free internet access across emerging markets. Tanay was previously a Schwarzman Scholar at Tsinghua University in Beijing, where he studied policy implications of tech trends like cybersecurity and misinformation. Prior to that, Tanay founded a new product team at LinkedIn to build out the platform’s job-seeking experience for the blue collar workforce. Tanay has a Bachelor’s in Business Administration from Berkeley, a Master’s in Global Affairs and Public Policy from Tsinghua University, and a Certification in Software Development from Microsoft. He is conversational in 4 languages (English, Mandarin, Hindi, and Marathi) and an avid traveler.
MICHAELA LEE
Currently a Tech and Human Rights Manager at BSR, Michaela advises companies on embedding respect for human rights into all aspects of their business through assessing human rights risks and developing impact-oriented strategies. Her spiritual beliefs drive her commitment to human rights and passion for defending the rights of the afflicted and needy. With a focus on emerging technology issues, she is apt to steer every conversation towards a discussion of AI and algorithmic accountability, disinformation and hate speech, or privacy and surveillance. She studied International Relations and Economics at UC Davis and was a Coro Fellow in San Francisco. Ask her for a book recommendation! She loves reading and sharing the books she loves.
MICHELLE LINCH
Michelle is a Senior Strategist at Google, bringing together policy, engineering, and social science to mitigate the magnification of hateful content on the web. She specializes in topics related to misinformation and fairness in machine learning to ensure user protection and trust at scale. With a human-centric approach, Michelle tests Google’s technology products for vulnerabilities related to biases and factual inaccuracies. Michelle graduated Magna Cum Laude from Emory University with degrees in Linguistics and Spanish. Outside of work, Michelle is trained in yoga and the science of functional movement.
DYLAN MOSES
Dylan is a Policy Manager on YouTube’s Trust & Safety team. Previously, he worked at Facebook, helping ensure trust, safety, and the integrity of the platform through enforcement against hate groups, gangs and cartels, and terrorist groups and was a Cybersecurity Strategist for Booz Allen Hamilton. He has a BA from Johns Hopkins University, where he studied International Relations and Security Theory and was nominated for the Robert Tucker Award for Best Thesis in International Relations. In his spare time, Dylan enjoys playing rugby, volunteering in underserved communities, and living vicariously through corgis on Instagram. Dylan is a Bronx, NY native and hopes to one day return home to continue building his community.
BRIAN SCULLY
Currently the Chief of the Countering Foreign Influence Task Force at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Brian leads DHS's efforts to build national resilience to foreign influence operations through public education and awareness. Since joining DHS 17 years ago, Brian has also worked to better secure America’s homeland in positions at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), Office of Intelligence and Analysis, and Office of Infrastructure Protection. Before joining the federal government, Brian served as a brand manager at a Fortune 100 company, led media and public affairs for a county government, and was a program manager at a non-profit organization.
ISABELLE RICE
Isabelle Rice is the Infrastructure Technical Lead for Facebook’s hate speech detection team, working with machine learning and policy experts to develop algorithms that function on a global scale. Prior to Facebook she worked at Microsoft in mapping, cloud storage, and accounting infrastructure. Isabelle received her BA in Computer Science from the University of Chicago and resides in Seattle in a jungle of 50-odd houseplants.
RHONA TARRANT
Rhona Tarrant is the US Editor for Storyful, a social media news intelligence agency, where she leads a team working on video verification and online investigations. Storyful verifies footage emerging from breaking news stories for newsrooms including the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, ABC, and more. Storyful specializes in covering misinformation and disinformation, particularly around elections, as well as online extremism, fringe platforms, and the impact of emerging technology on people’s lives. Before joining Storyful in 2017, Rhona worked as a reporter with RTE Radio 1 and as an assistant producer at WNYC. She is originally from Ireland and now lives in New York.
ASHLEY TOLBERT
An ex-NASA engineer, Ashley enjoys bridging her passions of science, security and social impact. She is currently a Senior Security Engineer at Netflix focusing on Crisis Management and Incident Response; she has also worked for the Department of Energy and Stanford University Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC). Her diverse background includes researching compromises of electrical SMART grids at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab and modeling software at NASA Ames as an Alabama Space Grant recipient. Ashley holds a M.S. in Information Security from Carnegie Mellon University and a B.S. in Software Engineering from Auburn University. She is a contributing writer for New America and sits on the Board of Women in Security and Privacy (WISP). When she’s not defending cyberspace, she’s running outside, discovering new music like Afrobeats, or traveling to be inspired.
NEAL UNGERLEIDER
A writer and content consultant, Neal is the founder and President of Nungerleider; in this capacity, he works with brands, organizations and investors to explain new technologies and products to both the general public and opinion leaders. In his previous role as a reporter for Fast Company, Neal spent six years covering cybersecurity, social media and society, autonomous vehicles, private space travel, and more. Neal has a BA in Journalism from Temple University and a MA in Middle Eastern Studies from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev where his thesis was written on state-funded English language news networks' coverage of post-2009 Iranian election unrest. In his free time, Neal enjoys cooking, reading and drinking large quantities of coffee. He resides in Chicago with his wife and son, but remains a proud native of New York's outer boroughs.
CLEMENT WOLF
Clement leads Google’s global public policy work on issues pertaining to information integrity (e.g. mis & disinformation, synthetic and manipulated media). In that capacity, he advises and works with product, engineering, and trust/safety teams at Google and YouTube on relevant product launches and cross-company initiatives. Previously, Clement was a public policy advisor to the Google News team and led Google’s global public policy work on the future of work and other economic issues. Clement earned a bachelor’s degree in Law from Universite Paris I; a master’s degree in international affairs (with emphasis on security) from Sciences Po Paris; and a master’s degree in management from ESSEC Business School.
2020 Advisory Board
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Joan Donovan, Harvard Kennedy School
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Nathan Freitas, The Guardian Project
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Jonas Kaiser, Berkman Klein Center
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Rachel Kalmar, Tableau
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James Mickens, Harvard School for Engineering and Applied Sciences
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Martha Minow, Harvard Law School
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Sarah Newman, Berkman Klein Center, metaLAB at Harvard
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Jordi Weinstock, Harvard Law School
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Jonathan Zittrain, Berkman Klein Center, Harvard Law School