After years spent as a CIA analyst, diplomat and national security advisor at the White House, Yaël Eisenstat began to view the breakdown of civil discourse as the biggest threat to US democracy.

Why you should listen

During her 18 years in the national security and global affairs world, Yaël Eisenstat became increasingly concerned with how the internet was contributing to political polarization, hate and division. She set out to both publicly sound alarm bells and see what role she could play in helping reverse this course.

This search led Eisenstat to Facebook, where she was hired to head a team to protect the integrity of political advertising for elections worldwide. Realizing she was not going to change the company from within, she is now a public advocate for transparency and accountability in tech, particularly where real-world-consequences affect democracy and societies around the world.

Yaël Eisenstat’s TED talk