Rose Jackson is the director of the Democracy + Tech Initiative within the Atlantic Council Technology Programs. She is an entrepreneur and former diplomat with nearly two decades of experience strengthening democracy and defending human rights, leveraging technology for social impact, and building institutions to support democratic activists around the world. She previously founded and served as chief executive officer of Beacon, a platform leveraging data and marketing technology to make it easier for people to take meaningful civic and political action.

Prior to founding her company, Jackson served as a senior policy adviser at the Open Society Foundations where she led a presidential transition initiative focused on reforming US support to foreign military and police. During the Obama administration, Jackson served as the chief of staff to the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor at the State Department, and before that as an advisor to US Senator Chris Coons on foreign policy and national security issues as a Galloway fellow.  

Jackson has consulted and worked for a wide range of campaigns, governments, and party organizations both in the United States and abroad. Internationally, with the National Democratic Institute, she advised parties, parliaments, and civil-society organizations in East and Southern Africa. Jackson also served as a Benghazi-based adviser and political analyst to the International Organization for Migration during the Libyan uprising in 2011.  

Jackson completed her master’s degree in international relations as a Rotary scholar in Kenya and earned her bachelor’s degree in international relations and economics at Wheaton College in Massachusetts. She is a Truman National Security Project fellow, a former term member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a former Center for New American Security NextGen fellow.