Maria Ressa

Why organisations work with Maria Ressa

• She has tested platform governance arguments against actual prosecution, exile threats and a coordinated state-backed disinformation campaign, which gives her a clarity on digital risk that academic experts rarely match.
• As co-founder of the Real Facebook Oversight Board and co-leader of Columbia’s Technology and Democracy Initiative, she sits at the centre of the policy conversation shaping how governments will regulate platforms and AI.
• Her Nobel citation specifically named the defence of free expression as a precondition for democracy, giving leadership and ESG audiences a credible voice on information integrity as a governance issue, not a communications one.
• She runs a working newsroom that has documented platform manipulation in real time, so her arguments come with primary evidence rather than secondary commentary.
• How to Stand Up to a Dictator gives her a published thesis on the architecture of digital authoritarianism that boards and policy teams can engage with in advance of a session.

Biography highlights

• 2021 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, jointly with Dmitry Muratov, for work safeguarding freedom of expression.
• Co-founder and CEO of Rappler, the Manila-based investigative news organisation she launched in 2012.
• Professor of Professional Practice, Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs; Distinguished Fellow and co-leader of the Technology and Democracy Initiative at SIPA’s Institute of Global Politics.
• Author of How to Stand Up to a Dictator (Harper, 2022), a New York Times bestseller, and Seeds of Terror (2003).
• 2021 UNESCO Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize; 2018 Golden Pen of Freedom from the World Association of News Publishers.
• Time Person of the Year 2018; Time 100 Most Influential People; BBC 100 Women.
• Nearly two decades as CNN bureau chief in Manila and Jakarta; former SVP for News and Current Affairs at ABS-CBN.

Biography

The 2021 Nobel Peace Prize citation named freedom of expression as a precondition for democracy. It was the first time since 1935 that the prize had been given to working journalists, and the choice was not symbolic. Ressa shared it with Dmitry Muratov for a body of work that treats disinformation, platform power and the erosion of shared reality as the defining governance problem of the decade.

Her vantage point is unusual. She co-founded Rappler in Manila in 2012, then ran it through years of state-backed harassment, criminal charges and an online campaign that the company itself documented in forensic detail. That experience produced a working theory of how engagement-driven platforms, weaponised by political actors, dismantle public trust and institutional legitimacy from below. The argument is laid out in How to Stand Up to a Dictator, the Harper book that became a New York Times bestseller and Princeton’s Class of 2027 Pre-read.

She now sits at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs as a Professor of Professional Practice and co-leads the Technology and Democracy Initiative at the Institute of Global Politics. The role pairs naturally with her work on the Real Facebook Oversight Board, an independent body of journalists, academics and activists holding Meta to account on content governance. Earlier in her career she opened CNN’s Manila bureau, ran its Jakarta bureau through the post-9/11 years, and led news at ABS-CBN; her 2003 book Seeds of Terror remains a reference on Jemaah Islamiyah.

For corporate audiences, the value sits in the bridge she builds between platform mechanics and executive decision-making. AI accelerates everything she has been documenting for a decade, and the regulatory response, in Brussels, Washington and Manila, is now arriving in the operating environment of any business with a public-facing reputation.

Key speaking topics

• Disinformation and the integrity of the information ecosystem
• Platform governance and Big Tech accountability
• AI ethics and the future of public trust
• Press freedom as institutional infrastructure
• Democratic resilience under digital authoritarianism
• Leadership and moral courage in contested environments

Ideal for

• Boards and C-suite teams reassessing reputational and regulatory risk in an AI-mediated information environment
• Chief Communications Officers, Chief Risk Officers and General Counsel responsible for platform exposure and disinformation response
• Public-sector and policy audiences working on technology regulation, democratic resilience and ESG frameworks
• Leadership programmes seeking a serious voice on values, courage and institutional integrity

Audience outcomes

• A working model of how engagement-driven platforms shape public perception of organisations, leaders and policy.
• Direct evidence, drawn from Rappler’s own reporting, of how coordinated disinformation campaigns are designed and executed.
• A clear read on where AI regulation and platform accountability are heading across major jurisdictions.
• A sharper sense of what leadership looks like when institutional norms are under pressure, told through a Nobel-recognised case.
• Language and frameworks for treating information integrity as a governance issue at board level, not a communications problem.