Camille Francois
United States
Chief Innovation Officer, Graphika

Breakout Session: True, False or … Neither? Tackling Disinformation Globally and Its Implications for the Boardroom

Camille Francois is a scholar of cyber conflict who advises technology companies and governments around the globe on issues related to cybersecurity and digital rights.

She is the Chief Innovation Officer at Graphika—a cybersecurity company focused on information integrity issues—and oversees its data analysis, investigation and R&D teams. She leads the company’s work to detect and mitigate disinformation, media manipulation and harassment.

Camille was previously Principal Researcher at Google, working on state-sponsored cyber threats against civil society, propaganda and coordinated disinformation campaigns, violent extremism, and embedding fairness in machine learning. She has pioneered efforts to define and document new digital threats such as “Patriotic Trolling” which look at how governments around the world use social media to harass and silence.

In 2019, Camille was recognized by the MIT Tech Review in its annual "35 Innovators Under 35" award, and named one of TIME Magazine's "100 Next" global leaders for her work on information operations. Camille is a Fulbright Scholar, a Mozilla fellow and an affiliate of the Harvard Berkman-Klein Center for Internet & Society. She holds a master’s degree in human rights from the French Institute of Political Sciences and a master’s degree in international security from the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. Camille’s research and work has been featured in various publications, including the New York Times, WIRED, Washington Post, Bloomberg Businessweek, Globo and Le Monde.

Camille was part of the first-ever-team given access to troves of data from Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other social media platforms as part of an investigation by the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence last year into the extent of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Her work in that report enabled the U.S. government to effectively analyze the integrity of its electoral process and evaluate the growing use of social media to influence critical democratic processes.