Renée DiResta

An expert on media manipulation, with a particular focus on how social media platforms are used to distort public opinion, Renée has advised Congress, the State Department and senior executives on how best to understand and respond to the problem.

Prior to joining the Stanford Internet Observatory, Renée served as the Director of Research at cybersecurity company New Knowledge and the Head of Policy for the nonprofit Data for Democracy. In these roles, Renée worked to develop a quantitative approach to disinformation detection for governments as well as brands, testified before Congress, and assisted in the development of technology policy related to election integrity, security, and privacy. In 2018, Renee led one of the two teams convened by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence to investigate the social network datasets documenting Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election.

Renée also served as part of the founding team of venture-backed supply chain logistics technology platform Haven and as a Principal at seed-stage venture capital fund O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures (OATV), where she focused on hardware and logistics startups. Before joining OATV, she spent seven years on Wall Street as an equity and derivatives trader at top quantitative proprietary trading firm, Jane Street.

Renée is a 2019 Mozilla Fellow in Media, Misinformation, and Trust, and a 2019 Truman National Security Project Fellow. She is also an affiliate of The Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, a Council on Foreign Relations Term Member, a Founding Adviser to the Center for Humane Technology, and a Staff Associate at Columbia University Data Science Institute. In 2017, Renée was named a Presidential Leadership Scholar.

A well-known contributor on issues of cybersecurity and disinformation, Renée’s work has been featured in The Washington Post, The New York Times, Politico, Slate, Fast Company, Inc., The Economist, CNN, CNBC, Bloomberg, TechCrunch, Forbes, Buzzfeed, and the Journal of Commerce. She writes for Wired as an IDEAS contributor and is the author of The Hardware Startup: Building Your Product, Business, and Brand published in 2015 by O’Reilly Media.

In 2015, Renée co-founded Vaccinate California, a parent-led childhood immunization advocacy organization. For fun, she enjoys cooking, dancing, craft projects, and going camping. Renée lives with her husband and two children in California.