Meet Our Founders
Jeff Allen
Jeff Allen is a former physicist and astronomer who left academia for data science in 2013. Since then, he has worked on multiple sides of the internet information ecosystem: on publishers who are trying to maximize the traffic they get from platforms, on platforms themselves, and on political organizations and campaigns just trying to navigate the online spaces.
While at Facebook, he worked on tackling systemic issues in the public content ecosystems of Facebook and Instagram, developing strategies to ensure that the incentive structure that the platforms created for publishers was in alignment with Facebooks company mission statement.
Jeff is the co-founder and Chief Research Officer for the Integrity Institute. He lives in Brooklyn, NY.
Sahar Massachi
Sahar was born in Israel to two refugees from Iran, and grew up in Rochester, New York. During a four year stint at Facebook, he worked on the civic integrity team, which protected elections and deepened civic engagement worldwide. Before that, he ran the data for fundraising at Wikipedia, and founded two prosocial startups.
Since then, Sahar became a fellow (now affiliate) at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University. He's a member of the advisory committee of the Louis D. Brandeis Legacy Fund for Social Justice, a StartingBloc fellow, and a Roddenbery Fellow.
Sahar is the co-founder and Executive Director of the Integrity Institute. He lives in Brooklyn, NY with his beloved.
Meet Our Board
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Paul Gowder
Paul is a tenured professor of law at Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law. From 2012-2020 he was at the University of Iowa College of Law (with courtesy appointments in philosophy and political science). His research is focused on the nexus of normative political theory, constitutional law, and social science, as well as law and technology.
Paul has been a visiting academic consultant to the Facebook Civic Integrity team from 2018-2019, and helped set up the Facebook Oversight Board.
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Samidh Chakrabarti
Samidh has spent his career at the intersection of technology and social impact. He most recently founded and led the Civic Integrity team at Facebook (now Meta) where he was responsible for keeping the 3B person community safe from societal-level harms, including driving the company's product work on election integrity and humanitarian crises. Prior to Facebook, Samidh was at Google where he led work on Civic Engagement products. Currently, Samidh is the Chief Product Officer at Groq where he is bringing responsibility to the core of a novel AI computing platform. Samidh holds graduate degrees from MIT in Artificial Intelligence, from Oxford in Modern History, and from Cambridge in Public Policy. He is still working to perfect his wild mushroom risotto.
Meet Our Team
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Abagail Lawson
RESEARCH PROJECT MANAGER
Abby’s background is in the think tank space, producing research and managing programs at the intersection of tech policy, cybersecurity and international relations. Her work has covered a wide range of topics, from cyber insurance to UN negotiations on cybercrime and responsible state behavior in cyberspace – and most recently, content moderation and platform regulation. She is based in New York City.
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Maddie Aleman
COMMUNITY ORGANIZER
Maddie Aleman (she/her) is a cultural worker and community builder across art, tech and design. Her experience includes launching application cycles, digital event production, and cultivating values-centered communities. She is based in New York City.
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Michael Swenson
COMMUNITY PROJECT MANAGER
Michael Swenson (he/they) drives community-led initiatives and projects focused on helping people understand Integrity work better, and empower members to do the right thing in the ever-present challenges we face as Integrity workers. In their previous roles, Michael worked at Meta on teen safety issues across Meta's family of apps and Discord, where they built the community-focused Policy Programs team which created and scaled an ecosystem of community programs and resources which connected users, community moderators, civil society, and academic groups with Discord's safety team and initiatives. Michael is a passionate academic and researcher, world traveler, and lives with their partner and two dogs in the San Francisco Bay Area.
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Rachel Townsend
MANAGING DIRECTOR
Rachel brings extensive nonprofit organizational development experience and joins the Integrity Institute’s co-founders Jeff Allen and Sahar Massachi on the Institute's senior leadership team. Rachel will be contributing her skills and experience to achieve the Institute’s shared mission. She is based in Little Rock, Arkansas.
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Sean Wang
PARTNERSHIPS & COLLABORATIONS MANAGER
Sean’s background is at the intersection of technology and research. He has helped build organizational partnerships and collaborative networks at universities, research organizations, and professional services on both sides of the Atlantic. He is based in Chicago.
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Sofia Bonilla
EXECUTIVE ASSOCIATE
Sofia's background has covered policy, research, and project management within the fields of international affairs and human rights. She has experience with major public and private sector projects that tackle labor rights issues in global supply chains, promote corporate social responsibility, champion migrant workers, and assist international development efforts. She is based in New York City.
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Spencer Gurley
RESEARCH ASSISTANT
Spencer has been in the intersection of technology, policy and integrity since beginning his research in ethical AI at the University of California, Santa Cruz in 2019. Since then he has worked professionally to bring personal data rights to individuals and has presented data reform policy to Congress. He is based in San Francisco.
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Susana Orozco
PARTNERSHIPS & OPERATIONS COORDINATOR
Susana’s experience includes community organizing with tenants, formerly incarcerated folks, and arts and environmental education with youth, all of which have included partnerships administration and alliance/relationship coordination. She is based in Los Angeles.