Cynthia Conti-Cook

Cynthia Conti-Cook is Technology Fellow at the Ford Foundation’s Gender, Racial, and Ethnic Justice team, where she helps build grantees’ capacity to respond to the expanding use of surveillance technologies against immigrant communities, as well as the potential use of technology to criminalize people who seek or aid abortions. Conti-Cook is author of “Open Data Policing” (Georgetown Law Journal Online, 2017) and co-author “Extradition in Post-Roe America” (CUNY Law Review, 2023). Her article “Surveilling the Digital Abortion Diary” (University of Baltimore Law Review, 2020) was featured on CNN, NYTimes, NBC, VICE, and MSNBC. Before joining the Ford Foundation, Conti-Cook was a civil rights litigator and public defender at the Legal Aid Society of New York, where she pioneered a first-of-its-kind public database (CAPstat) that tracks misconduct by New York City police officers. Her work on CAPstat has been featured in prominent news outlets and is being replicated by other public defender offices across the country. Conti-Cook received a J.D. from CUNY School of Law and a B.A. from Bard College.