Dyan Mae Cortez is a Program Manager at Open Technology Fund, where she works to enable the research, development, and implementation of internet freedom technologies in authoritarian contexts. Her professional interests encompass surveillance and censorship practices in Southeast Asia & the Pacific, digital transnational repression, and funder coordination.  Dyan also supports high-risk human rights activists, civil society organizations, and journalists experiencing state-sponsored digital emergencies through OTF’s Rapid Response Fund. She first joined OTF as a Program Specialist in November 2021.

Prior to OTF, Dyan worked extensively in international human rights advocacy and grantmaking. As Policy and Advocacy Coordinator at PAI, an international reproductive rights organization, Dyan worked with sexual health advocates in the Global South on advocacy projects and guided grantees through the organization’s grant administration process. Dyan has also worked on youth activism grantmaking at Open Society Foundations and supported human rights, privacy, and technology litigation as a Paralegal at the ACLU’s National Legal Department.

Dyan graduated from Fordham University with a BA in Cultural Anthropology and International Humanitarian Affairs.