Jessica Dheere '93 is the Director of Ranking Digital Rights. She is founder, former executive director, and board member of SMEX, the Middle East’s leading digital rights research and advocacy organization. As a 2018–19 research fellow at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, she launched the CYRILLA Collaborative (cyrilla.org). She is also a member of the 2019-20 class of Technology and Human Rights Fellow at Harvard’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy. Dheere has presented at the Internet Governance Forum, the Milton Wolf Seminar on Media and Diplomacy, RightsCon, and the International Journalism Festival. She graduated with a bachelor’s degree in art history and Latin American studies, and earned her master’s in media studies from the New School in New York City. In 2014, she was awarded a scholarship to study intensive Arabic as a Middlebury College Kathryn Davis Fellow for Peace. You can read more about her work in a recent issue of the Princeton Alumni Weekly.

"My career trajectory is far from predictable, from art history and Latin American studies to internet policy and the Middle East. But art history taught me how to look closely at things and describe what I see, rather than what I expect to see. Latin American studies, including a semester abroad in Mexico and a lot of other travel, taught me how interconnected we all are. In my career and in my life, I aim to synthesize the best of the analog world I was born into with the digital world that has since emerged and do my small part to make it a better, more inviting place for all.

I am connected to GradFUTURES through the think tank New America, where the Ranking Digital Rights research program is housed. I look forward to reconnecting with Princeton as a mentor through the fellowship."