Dr. Rebecca Portnoff has dedicated her career to building tools and techniques to seek out and help child victims of sexual abuse. She is currently Head of Data Science at Thorn, where she owns strategy and vision for Data Science across the organization. She works cross functionally with business and technical functions to develop, deploy and maintain machine learning/artificial intelligence (ML/AI) and algorithms to: accelerate victim identification, stop re-victimization (via the removal of child sexual abuse material from the open web), and prevent abuse from occurring. She leads Thorn’s engagement with ML/AI as a field, including emerging threats and emerging technologies.

Rebecca brings with her over a decade of experience in scientific research, machine learning and analytics, as well as several years as a trauma-informed people leader. She has experience in scaling teams, culture and mission impact in a fast-paced, tech startup setting. As a technology leader, her product portfolio consists of mission-driven ML/AI. She is also an avid musician, singing jazz and playing the violin in her free time. She holds a B.S.E. in Computer Science from Princeton University, where she also minored in vocal jazz, and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from UC Berkeley.