Liana Keesing

Liana Keesing serves as a campaigns manager at Issue One, where she leads the tech reform team’s work on artificial intelligence, national security, and privacy at the federal and state level. An engineer before she jumped into policy work, Liana’s ability to distill complex technical topics for general audiences makes her uniquely effective as an advocate working at the intersection of democracy and emerging technology. By expanding Issue One’s network of partners, briefing key policymakers, and publishing articles and reports, Liana has helped establish Issue One as a clear leader in the emerging technology policy space since joining the team in April 2024.

Previously, Liana served as an HAI Fellow and Research Assistant for the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security (HSGAC), where she helped craft legislation on AI policy issues like federal procurement of AI, deepfakes, and agency use of AI. Her work on structuring AI leadership within federal agencies through HSGAC hearings and the AI LEAD Act was incorporated into Sec. 10 of President Biden’s Executive Order on the Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence (E.O. 14110).

While working on the Hill, Liana was also finishing her master’s and B.S. in electrical engineering at Stanford University, where she studied systems architecture for emerging technologies like AI, quantum and photonic computing, and internet-of-things (IoT) hardware. As a systems engineer, Liana co-founded and served as CTO of a startup to improve the situational awareness of tactical-level soldiers, programmed behaviors for the U.S. Navy’s first autonomous ship “Seahunter,” and wrote papers on the use of machine learning to optimize cache design in hardware microarchitecture. She also earned a minor in physics and honors in ethics for her thesis, which studied how smart home IoT surveillance systems (like Ring doorbells) shifted privacy norms in American neighborhoods and the implications for our democracy.

At Stanford, Liana was also highly active in civic engagement, achieving national recognition for her work leading StanfordVotes during the 2020 election and helping found Stanford’s election day holiday, “Democracy Day,” which she directed during 2022 and 2023. She also served as a three-year team captain of Stanford’s Division 1 varsity fencing team.

In 2022, Liana was named as a Truman Scholar for her leadership, academic excellence, and commitment to public service. In her free time, she loves to travel, dance, bake, and spend as much time outside as possible.