Ranking Digital Rights works with a variety of researchers and affiliates based around the world. Also, see our Funders and Partners as well as our Governance page.
Director
Jessica Dheere is the Director of Ranking Digital Rights. She is the founder, former executive director, and board member of SMEX, the Middle East’s leading digital rights research and advocacy organization. As a 2018–19 research fellow at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, she launched the CYRILLA Collaborative. She is also a member of the 2019-20 class of Technology and Human Rights Fellow at Harvard’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy. Dheere has presented at the Internet Governance Forum, the Milton Wolf Seminar on Media and Diplomacy, RightsCon, and the International Journalism Festival.
Her recent publications include “Misguiding Multistakeholderism: A Nongovernmental Perspective on the Arab IGF,” and a legal research methodology for locating digital rights-related law. She is a member of the inaugural Advisory Network to the Freedom Online Coalition, and co-chair of the policy committee of the Global Network Initiative.
She graduated from Princeton University with a bachelor’s degree in art history and Latin American studies and earned her master’s in media studies from the New School in New York City. In 2014, she was awarded a scholarship to study intensive Arabic as a Middlebury College Kathryn Davis Fellow for Peace.
Projects Director
Ellery Roberts Biddle is the Projects Director at Ranking Digital Rights, where she leads our projects and policy teams in building compelling narratives showing how technology companies’ policies affect human rights. Active in the global digital rights community since 2011, she previously worked as the Advocacy Director at Global Voices, where she edited more than 2,000 stories about human rights in the digital age. In 2017, she led a team of Global Voices researchers in a cross-regional exploration of Facebook’s Free Basics app, the only study of its kind.
Biddle is a graduate of the University of Chicago’s Harris School and was a fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society from 2014-2017. In addition to Global Voices, she has written for The New York Times, The Guardian, Slate, Quartz, and Americas Quarterly. She is fluent in Spanish and tweets at @ellerybiddle.
Director of RDR Development & Impact
Amy Brouillette is the Director of Development & Impact at Ranking Digital Rights. Prior to joining RDR, Brouillette served as director of the European Media Program at the Center for Media, Data and Society (CMDS) at Central European University in Budapest. Her work at CMDS involved developing and managing the Center’s research and projects related to media and freedom of expression in Europe. In addition to her work at CMDS, Brouillette has also served as a research consultant and scholar-in-residence at the Center for Global Communication Studies (CGCS), Annenberg School for Communications, University of Pennsylvania. She holds a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Colorado, Boulder. Her articles have appeared in Foreign Policy, Al Jazeera, and the Columbia Journalism Review.
Operations Director
Lisa Gutermuth is the Operations Director at Ranking Digital Rights. Before joining RDR, Gutermuth was a project coordinator at Tactical Technology Collective, a digital rights organization based in Berlin, dedicated to the use of information for activism. She has primarily worked on digital security-based projects such as Security in-a-box, as well as projects using digital tools and open data for citizen-driven investigation and advocacy. Working with a range of different organizations over the years, her work has also touched on index creation, mapping, remote sensing, and data visualization. Gutermuth graduated magna cum laude from the University of New Hampshire, with bachelor degrees in international affairs and business administration, with a focus on international business and economics. She completed her master’s degree at Humboldt University in Berlin, in agricultural economics, where she wrote her thesis on the impact of satellite imagery application in agriculture.
Senior Policy and Partnerships Manager
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.
Nathalie is an RDR old-timer, having first joined the project in 2013 as a summer fellow during her PhD program at the University of Southern California. Over the next few years, she led methodology development concerning mobile ecosystems, helped develop the Digital Standard in partnership with Consumer Reports, and led a small team working to apply RDR’s privacy and human rights evaluative framework to develop indicators for evaluating national digital ID systems. After completing her PhD in 2018, Nathalie returned to RDR as full-time staff to lead the expansion of the RDR Corporate Accountability Index’s methodology to address human rights risks associated with tech companies’ business models, specifically the role that targeted advertising and algorithmic systems play in shaping internet users’ online experiences. In 2020, Nathalie was the lead author for the “It’s the Business Model” report series, which builds on her 2018 Motherboard op-ed, “Targeted Advertising is Ruining the Internet and Breaking the World,” to argue that disinformation, hate speech, and other “information harms” linked to social media platforms are rooted in the surveillance capitalism business model. The report series calls on governments to focus reform efforts on data protection and corporate governance, rather than attempting to regulate online speech.
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. Follow her on Twitter @MarechalPhD
Research Manager
Zak Rogoff is a Research Manager at Ranking Digital Rights. He works for an internet that truly serves the interests of everyone, and he believes the human rights framework is the best way to get there. Rogoff has appeared on Al Jazeera and had writing and quotations published in outlets from Motherboard to the scientific journal Nature. At Access Now, he organized against internet shutdowns with a global coalition. Rogoff has also led campaigns at the Free Software Foundation and worked to rein in government surveillance at U.S.-based Fight for the Future and the Chilean NGO Derechos Digitales. His education is interdisciplinary. He completed an MA in communication, culture & technology from Georgetown University and a BS in robotics engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute. Rogoff lives in his native Washington, D.C. and speaks Spanish. Follow him on Twitter @Zakkai
Company Engagement Manager
Jan Rydzak is the Company Engagement Manager at Ranking Digital Rights. He holds a PhD and MA in
Government & Public Policy from the University of Arizona as well as an MA in Modern Languages from Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in Poland. Prior to joining RDR, Rydzak worked as Associate Director for Program at the Global Digital Policy Incubator (GDPi) at Stanford University, where he analyzed global approaches to disinformation, new models of content moderation, and threats to human rights stemming from the faulty deployment and regulation of technology.
Rydzak is interested in how online decisions and dynamics reverberate in the offline world and how (dis)information flows in volatile circumstances. His work has spanned various environments, including the European Commission and the multi-stakeholder Global Network Initiative (GNI), where he served as a Google Policy Fellow. His doctoral research focused on the links between network shutdowns, connectivity, and street protest. He has published a report on the human rights impact of network disruptions through GNI, a widely cited study linking communication blackouts with escalations of violence in India, and commentary in Foreign Policy, The Conversation, and the Hindustan Times. Rydzak is fluent in Polish, Portuguese, Spanish, and French. He is based in Warsaw, Poland. Follow him on Twitter @ElCalavero
Global Partnerships Manager
Leandro Ucciferri is the Global Partnerships Manager at Ranking Digital Rights. He is a lawyer specializing in technology policy and regulation about the right to privacy, data protection, and cybersecurity. Before joining RDR, Leandro was a researcher and project officer at the Association for Civil Rights (ADC, in Spanish), a non-profit and independent NGO, based in Buenos Aires, Argentina, from 2015 to 2020. At ADC, Leandro managed research projects and advocacy campaigns focused on the right to privacy in the digital age. He has published reports covering issues such as biometrics, encryption, surveillance, cybersecurity, financial technologies, and digital identity. He has participated as a speaker in international conferences including at the United Nations, the OECD, RightsCon, the IGF. You can follow him at @leandrotx.
Program Manager
Veszna Wessenauer is the Program Manager with RDR, mainly responsible for
planning and managing the research and production of the RDR Corporate Accountability Index. She believes that the internet today has the potential to support just digital futures where technology serves the democratic needs of the public but there is a lot to be done to realize that potential. She holds an MA in Human Rights from Central European University. Prior to joining RDR, she worked with several Hungarian and international NGOs, including Political Capital, Democracy Reporting International, EU-Russia Civil Society Forum. a Hungarian think tank focused on democracy and rule of law in Central Europe. She was a recipient of Open Society Foundation’s Think Tank Young Professional fellowship and National Endowment for Democracy’s professional scholarship. She has also previously served as a research fellow at the Center for Media, Data and Society (Central European University – School of Public Policy), researching topics related to journalistic source protection, online privacy, and data protection, and online political extremism. She is fluent in Hungarian, English, and German. She currently lives in Budapest, Hungary. You can follow her at @wvessna.
Research Analyst
Jie Zhang is a Research Analyst at Ranking Digital Rights. With a focus on China’s tech companies, tech policies and
regulations, she is interested in how technological advancements shape the country’s governing patterns and evolve the social ecosystem. Prior to joining RDR, Zhang conducted research on China’s fintech sector and wrote about Chinese tech giants and regulatory issues in the TMT sector. She previously reported for the Washington Post Beijing Bureau from 2007 to 2014. Zhang completed her masters degree in public administration from Harvard Kennedy School. She also holds a master’s degree in international relations from China Foreign Affairs University and studied at the Johns Hopkins University-Nanjing University Center for Chinese and American Studies.
Communications Officer
Aliya Bhatia is the Communications Officer at Ranking Digital Rights where she supports the team with increasing RDR’s visibility and impact across key channels. In this role, she is responsible for developing strategy and messaging across all online channels, communication with key stakeholders including funders, media, and allied organizations, and participation in key conferences and policy arenas. Prior to joining RDR, she worked on the New York City-wide campaign for the 2020 Census, where she coordinated efforts between partners in technology, government, civil society, and media around the Census, developing disinformation, digital security, and media briefing plans. Aliya has conducted research and published work on technology, civic participation, access, and human rights at Columbia University’s Entrepreneurship & Policy Initiative, The Brookings Institution, Civic Hall, New York Immigration Coalition, and Silicon Harlem. She has an MPA from Columbia University and a BA in International Relations and Art History from the University of Toronto. You can follow her at @AliyaBhatia.
Senior Operations Associate
Kelly Ross is a Senior Operations Associate at Ranking Digital Rights. In this position, she provides operational support to the RDR project. Prior to joining RDR, Ross worked at a lobbying firm that focused on information technology policy, where she served as a research and policy associate. Her past internships also include working as a public policy intern at the U.S. Association of Former Members of Congress and working in the Public Affairs office of the U.S. Embassy in Muscat, Oman. She holds a B.A in foreign affairs from the University of Virginia, where she mainly focused on Europe and the MENA region, studying global issues of security and justice, terrorism and political violence, and U.S. foreign policy.
Data Engineer
Augusto Mathurin is a Data Engineer at Ranking Digital Rights. Prior to joining RDR, Mathurin was CTO of Lyris IT, a start-up based in Argentina, dedicated to digital transformation projects. He also co-founded Virtuagora, a digital platform for citizen participation, and Embajadores de Internet, a platform that links the internet governance ecosystem to Spanish-speaking citizens. In 2017, he was selected as the Internet Society’s 25 under 25 youth who were using the internet to make an impact in their communities and beyond. In 2019, Augusto started conducting research about the internet’s routing security and BGP interconnection in Latin America as an external consultant in LACNIC. He was also a MANRS research fellow in 2020. Mathurin completed his engineering degree at the Universidad Tecnologica Nacional Santa Fe, where he also taught for six years. He is currently pursuing a Master’s degree in Public Policy and Management at the Universidad de Chile.
Policy Fellow
Alex Rochefort is a PhD candidate in the Division of Emerging Media Studies at Boston University’s College of Communication. His research focuses on platform governance, communication policy, and content moderation. Alex’s work incorporates perspectives from the public policy field to explain the development of public and private responses to issues in the digital media environment.
Tech Manager
Oscar Montiel is the Tech Manager at Ranking Digital Rights. Before joining RDR, he was the Latin America Regional Manager for The Engine Room, an organization that supports civil society’s use of data and technology. During his time there, he facilitated the development of tools like Monitor Presupuestario for budget monitoring and Violencia Policial to show the stories behind police violence in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He previously worked at the Open Knowledge Foundation, Codeando México, and Mexico City’s Government. In these roles, he built civic technology tools, promoted open data policies across Latin America, and evaluated the quality of data in multiple countries through the Global Open Data Index and the Open Data Cities Census. He tweets infrequently at @tlacoyodefrijol.
Founder
Rebecca MacKinnon founded Ranking Digital Rights in 2013 at New America. Author of Consent of the Networked: The Worldwide Struggle for Internet Freedom (Basic Books, 2012), MacKinnon has been a leading voice in the movement for freedom of expression and privacy online since 2004. MacKinnon co-founded the citizen media network Global Voices, serves on the board of directors of the Committee to Protect Journalists, and was a founding member of the Global Network Initiative.
Fluent in Mandarin Chinese, MacKinnon was CNN’s Beijing Bureau Chief from 1998-2001 and Tokyo Bureau Chief from 2001-2003. Since leaving CNN in 2004, she has held fellowships at Harvard’s Shorenstein Center on the Press and Public Policy, the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, the Open Society Foundation, Princeton’s Center for Information Technology Policy, and at the University of California, she where was a University of California Freedom of Speech and Civic Engagement Fellow and a UC San Diego Pacific Leadership Fellow in the 2019-2020 academic year.
Before launching RDR, she was a senior research fellow (2012-2013) and Bernard L. Schwartz senior fellow (2010-2012) at New America. In 2007-08 she taught online journalism and conducted research on Chinese internet censorship at the University of Hong Kong’s Journalism and Media Studies Centre, and was a 2013 adjunct lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. She was also a visiting affiliate at the Annenberg School for Communication’s Center for Global Communications Studies. She received her AB magna cum laude from Harvard University.
