Gisela Pérez de Acha

Gisela Pérez de Acha is a consultant and trainer for PEN America’s Online Abuse Defense Program. Pérez de Acha is a trained human rights lawyer and a journalist focused on digital forensics and investigative reporting on the extremism beat at the Investigative Reporting Program. She was part of an Emmy Award-winning team at The New York Times for her collaboration on the story about The Siege of Culiacán. She has a master’s degree from the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, where she teaches cybersecurity for student journalists. In addition, Pérez de Acha is an open source researcher at the Human Rights Center Investigations Lab, and a trainer at Amnesty International’s Digital Verification Corps, a network of more than 100 volunteers at six global universities who fact-check social media posts regarding war crimes and grave human rights violations around the world. She has specialized in internet studies and the politics of Latin America for over a decade. Born and raised in Mexico, Pérez de Acha speaks fluent Spanish, English, French, and Portuguese.