Rebecca Williams (she/her) is a writer, lawyer, and artist who studies how data and technology shape power. Her work asks how we can resist surveillance and extraction while building systems that support collective care and self-determination.
She is currently the Senior Strategist for the Privacy & Data Governance unit at the American Civil Liberties Union, where she advises on privacy-by-design practices to support organizers and ACLU affiliates across the country. Before focusing on privacy, Rebecca spent a decade advancing transparency to hold government accountable, working at the Sunlight Foundation, Data.gov, and the White House Office of Management and Budget. Throughout her career, she has understood that information is power and has worked to ensure it is used in the public interest.
Her research and writing explore how legal and technical infrastructures influence our ability to organize, resist, and care for one another. She has been a Technology and Public Purpose Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School and an advisor to the Surveillance Resistance Lab, with work published in Tech Policy Press, Wired, The New Republic, and MIT Technology Review. She serves on the board of MuckRock, a nonprofit platform for government transparency and public records journalism.
Outside of policy, Rebecca is an emerging painter and visual artist. Her work uses oil, charcoal, and marker to explore the emotional life of digital systems, memes, dogs, oceans, and the surreal edges of modern life. Her art is ode to what she loves and a respite from the systems she studies.
She holds a B.A. in Communication and Media Studies from the University of Massachusetts and a J.D. from Western New England University School of Law. She is admitted to the New York Bar and has received honors including the American Bar Association’s “10 Women to Watch in Legal Tech.”
Rebecca lives in New York City with her dog, Hannah Arendt. For more information, see her CV.