• Director, Democracy + Tech Initiative

Rose Jackson

Rose Jackson is an entrepreneur and former diplomat with nearly two decades of experience strengthening democracy and defending human rights, leveraging technology for social impact, and building institutions to support democratic activists around the world. Jackson is currently the director of the Democracy + Tech Initiative at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab. She previously founded and served as CEO of Beacon, a platform leveraging data and marketing technology to make it easier for people to take meaningful civic and political action.

Prior to founding her company, Jackson served as a senior policy adviser at the Open Society Foundations (OSF) where she led a presidential transition initiative focused on reforming U.S. support to foreign military and police. During the Obama Administration, Jackson served as the chief of staff to the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor at the State Department, and before that as an advisor to Senator Chris Coons on foreign policy and national security issues as a Galloway Fellow.

Jackson has consulted and worked for a wide range of campaigns, governments and party organizations both in the United States and abroad. Internationally, with the National Democratic Institute, she advised parties, parliaments, and civil society organizations in East and Southern Africa. Jackson also served as a Benghazi-based adviser and political analyst to the International Organization for Migration during the Libyan uprising in 2011.

Jackson completed her Masters in International Relations as a Rotary Scholar in Kenya and earned her Bachelors in International Relations and Economics at Wheaton College in Massachusetts. She is a Truman National Security Project fellow, and former term member of the Council on Foreign Relations and Center for New American Security NextGen fellow

May 2021

FAST THINKING: Trump’s post-Facebook future

by Atlantic Council

Facebook's Oversight Board ruled Wednesday that former US President Donald Trump will remain banned from the platform for encouraging the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol. And what consequences is it likely to have on online radicalization and the use and abuse of social media around the world?
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March 2021

FAST THINKING: A glimpse into our digital future at the latest tech hearing on Capitol Hill

by Atlantic Council

This wasn’t just another tech hearing. It was the first since the January 6 riot on Capitol Hill. It was focused on extremism and misinformation. And our team at the Digital Forensic Research Lab, which is all over these issues, tells us that lawmakers came at their questioning in a new way that offers insight into what our digital future could look like.
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February 2021

The big takeaways from Biden’s first foreign-policy speech

by Atlantic Council

President Joe Biden campaigned on a promise of renewed American engagement with the world after the era of “America First”—and the president’s remarks were designed to show that this shift is already underway.
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