Linda Raftree

Linda Raftree is an anthropologist whose work focuses on the ethical use of technology and data in international development, human rights, and humanitarian contexts. She is the founder of the MERL Tech Initiative (MTI), which has explored responsible use of digital tools and data since 2014. Prior to founding MTI, she held roles at Plan International and other global development and humanitarian organizations, working across post-conflict issues, civil society strengthening, youth engagement, digital development, rights-based programming, emergency response, and transparency and governance.

Raftree is a widely recognized convener who brings together practitioners and researchers from monitoring, evaluation, research, and learning (MERL), data science, and emerging technology sectors to strengthen collaboration, build capacity, and advance good practice. She founded MTI’s global Community of Practice on Emerging AI, with more than 1,700 members, and has led the New York City Technology Salon since 2011. She advises foundations, bilateral agencies, and global nonprofit organizations on responsible AI, data policy and practice, digital safeguarding, inclusive digital approaches, and safe digital programming.

Her publications address responsible AI approaches, ethical implications of large language models, AI and philanthropy, gender and digital technology, technology and child and youth migration and refugee populations, mobile technologies and youth workforce development, participatory film-based approaches with refugee populations, ethical and inclusive approaches to technology in evaluation, and emerging methods for evaluating tech- and AI-enabled programming.

Raftree is a Certified Information Privacy Professional (CIPP and CIPM). She serves on GitLab’s Learning for Action Fund Advisory Committee and CDAC’s SAFE AI Pool of Experts. She has lived and worked extensively outside the United States, including a decade in El Salvador in the 1990s, and has supported research and program implementation across East, West, and Southern Africa, Asia and the Pacific, and Latin America.