Alexa Koenig, PhD, JD, is Co-Executive Director and Co-Faculty Director of the Human Rights Center (winner of the 2015 MacArthur Award for Creative and Effective Institutions) and an adjunct professor at UC Berkeley School of Law, where she teaches classes that focus on the intersection of emerging technologies and human rights. She also co-teaches a class on open source reporting at Berkeley Journalism. Alexa founded the Human Rights Center’s Technology Program, and co-founded the Human Rights Center Investigations Lab, which trains students and professionals to use social media and other digital open source content to strengthen human rights research, reporting, and accountability. Alexa is a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s Committee on Scientific Freedom and Responsibility, an inaugural member of the Technology Advisory Board for the Innovation Lab at Human Rights First, and a co-founder of the University of California Network on Human Rights Fact-Finding. She previously held appointments as co-chair and co-founder of the Technology Advisory Board of the Office of the Prosecutor at the International Criminal Court; co-chair of the International Bar Association's Human Rights Law Committee (which she now serves as an advisor); and a member of the University of California’s Presidential Working Group on Artificial Intelligence (for which she co-chaired the Human Resources subcommittee). Alexa has been honored with several awards for her work, including the United Nations Association-SF’s Global Human Rights Award, the Mark Bingham Award for Excellence, and the Eleanor Swift Award for Public Service. She has also been honored with a residency at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center (2019), as a 2020 Woman Inspiring Change by Harvard Law School (2020), as one of “100 Brilliant Women in AI Ethics” by Women in AI Ethics (2022), and with diverse grants for her research, including from the National Science Foundation and numerous private foundations. She directed development of the Berkeley Protocol on Digital Open Source Investigations and has conducted trainings on online open source investigations at organizations around the world. Her research and commentary have appeared in the Annual Review of Law and Social Science, Foreign Policy, Foreign Affairs, US News and World Report, OpinioJuris, JustSecurity, and elsewhere. Alexa has a BA from UCLA summa cum laude, a JD from the University of San Francisco magna cum laude, and both an MA and a PhD from UC Berkeley with honors.
Alexa Koenig
Co-Executive Director and Co-Faculty Director
