Libby Liu

Libby Liu is an internationally renowned expert on human rights, press freedom, information operations and internet freedom who joined Whistleblower Aid as chief executive officer in April 2021. 

Prior to joining Whistleblower Aid, Ms. Liu created the Open Technology Fund (OTF), where she spearheaded efforts to support tools that circumvent censorship and surveillance and advance free speech worldwide. Today, more than 2 billion people use OTF-supported technologies every day, including Signal, TOR and Wireguard.

Ms. Liu was compelled to create OTF to protect the digital lives of individuals while serving as president of Radio Free Asia (RFA), a non-profit media company that provides uncensored objective news and information otherwise unavailable to audiences in East Asia. In 16 years at the helm, she led RFA’s vision, directed RFA’s editorial strategy and shaped its administrative policies, working closely with a bipartisan board, its grantor agency, USAGM, oversight and appropriations committees of the U.S. Congress, the State Department, international public broadcasters and stakeholders in the U.S. and abroad.

Ms. Liu has served as assistant district attorney in the San Francisco District Attorney’s office and is a former corporate labor and employment law attorney.

She holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of California-Berkeley, an MBA from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and a J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania Law School. In 2021, she was honored as a Luxembourg Peace Prize laureate for outstanding work on technology that promotes peace.

Session:

• Panel A: Whistleblowers Protecting Democracy (Saturday, April 13 - 10:00 a.m.)