Frances Haugen

FRANCES HAUGEN, born in Iowa City, Iowa,  is the daughter of two professors and grew up attending the Iowa caucuses with her parents, instilling a strong sense of pride in democracy and responsibility for civic participation. Haugen holds a degree in electrical and computer engineering from Olin College and an MBA from Harvard. She is a specialist in algorithmic product management, having worked on ranking algorithms at Google, Pinterest, Yelp, and Facebook. She was recruited to Facebook to be the lead product manager on the civic misinformation team, which dealt with issues related to democracy and misinformation, and later also worked on counter-espionage. During her time at Facebook, Haugen became increasingly alarmed by the choices the company makes prioritizing their own profits over public safety and putting people’s lives at risk. As a last resort and at great personal risk, Haugen made the courageous decision to blow the whistle on Facebook. Haugen fundamentally believes that the problems we are facing today with social media are solvable. We can have social media that brings out the best in humanity.