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Marietje Schaake

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A leading voice at the intersection of technology, democracy, and geopolitics, Marietje Schaake focuses on the unchecked power of digital technology and its impact on democracy. 

Schaake served as a Member of the European Parliament for the Dutch democratic party D66 from 2009 to 2019, where she served on the International Trade Committee as well as the Foreign Affairs Committee. 

Among others she chaired the Foreign Affairs Committee's Working Group on External Financial Instruments, served as Vice-Preseident of the Delegation for Relations with the United States and served as Chief Observer for the EU's Election Observation Mission to Kenya in 2017.

VoteWatch recognized her as one of the most active members while Politico and the Wall Street Journal named her one of the most technology-savvy members ever to sit in the European Parliament, and The New Yorker profiled her shortly after her move to the United States. 

Since leaving Parliament, Schaake has built a body of work translating hard legislative experience into influence over how democracies govern technology. From 2019 to 2024 she served as International Policy Director at Stanford's Cyber Policy Center and the Institute for Human-Centered Atrificial Intelligence. At Stanford she taught courses including "AI and the Rule of Law: A Global Perspective" and "Governing Artificial Intelligence: Law, Policy, and Institutions." 

She was appointed as Special Advisor to European Commission Executive Vice-President Margrethe Vestager, served on the UN Secretary-General's High-Level Advisory Body on AI, and co-chaired the Code of Practice under the EU AI Act. 

Her ideas reach a wide public: she writes a monthly column for the Financial Times, and in 2024 published The Tech Coup: How to Save Democracy from Silicon Valley (Princeton University Press), now translated into Dutch, German, Italian, and Japanese with Polish forthcoming. In April 2026 she published a follow-up in Dutch, De Machtscode ("The Powercode"), with translations forthcoming. She currently serves on the Board of Directors of Mediahuis, as a Senior Advisor to the European AI company Domyn, and on the boards of the European Council on Foreign Relations, the Observer Research Foundation, OCCRP, and MERICS, among others. 

During the fellowship, Marietje will address what democratic resistance to the outsize power of tech companies looks like, and will also develop a tech policy handbook for public leaders and policymakers, helping them understand tech topics in an accessible way. 

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