Kat Duffy is a senior fellow for digital and cyberspace policy at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). Duffy has more than two decades of experience operating at the nexus of emerging technology, democratic principles, corporate responsibility, and human rights. Most recently, she directed the Task Force for a Trustworthy Future Web at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, where she served as a resident senior fellow and published the Task Force’s comprehensive report, Scaling Trust on the Web.
As the founder and CEO of RightsDuff Strategies, she has advised companies, governments, and nongovernmental organizations on building socially responsible business practices within the technology sector, developing strategies to align emerging technologies with democratic norms and human rights, and establishing best practices for civil society engagement in the technology and human rights space.
Through her previous work at the U.S. Department of State and in the nonprofit sector, Duffy oversaw the implementation of more than $100 million in foreign assistance and philanthropy designed to support democracy, rights, and governance initiatives across the globe, with a particular focus on digital rights, digital safety, and technology platform social accountability. Her work included some of the first public-private partnerships between high-risk civil society actors in emerging markets and private cybersecurity firms. Duffy began her international career in Colombia, where she served as a junior professional officer with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.
Duffy served for five years on the board of the Global Network Initiative, a platform that helps technology companies respect freedom of expression and privacy rights when faced with government pressure to hand over user data, remove content, or restrict communications. She has also served on the board of directors for Atlas Corps, a global exchange organization, and was a founding member of Atlas Corp’s advisory board. Duffy was named an expert advisor for the World Economic Forum’s Partnering with Civil Society in the Fourth Industrial Revolution Initiative and has lectured at Yale, Stanford, and Georgetown Universities on technology policy and innovation.
Duffy received her BA from Yale University and her JD from the University of Michigan, where she was a Darrow Scholar and Bates Fellow. She has lived and worked in Colombia, Cuba, South Africa, and Tunisia, and is fluent in Spanish.
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