Valeria Kovtun

Valeria Kovtun is a journalist, policymaker, and practitioner in cognitive warfare who has spent a decade building societies' defenses against authoritarian influences. In 2020, she left the BBC and London to launch and run Ukraine's first governmental media literacy body, Filter, a national institution whose public interventions reached millions of Ukrainians daily. She also led an AI-driven early-warning pre-bunking project with over 100 media partners across the country. 

Most recently, as Strategic Partnerships Lead at OpenMinds in London, Valeria delivered threat intelligence and response services to more than 30 governments and organizations, helping European and US partners navigate information threats in contested and hard-to-access environments. She has advised UNDP, IREX, OSCE, Radio Free Europe, the British Council, and Zinc Network on designing national-scale programs to counter information threats. Valeria holds an MSc from the London School of Economics and fellowships from Chevening and the UN. As an Obama Scholar at Columbia University, she is now exploring how to build societal resilience worldwide.