Lucina Di Meco

Lucina is a recovering political activist and a gender equality expert. Born and raised in Italy, she’s been promoting women’s rights for the last twenty years, working with a wide range of international nonprofits, foundations, and UN agencies across Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

Lucina is the co-founder of #ShePersisted Global, a cross-national initiative that tackles gendered disinformation and abuse against women in public life through research and thought leadership, supporting women leaders, and advocating for safer digital platforms. Her groundbreaking study, #ShePersisted. Women, Politics & Power in the New Media World, is the foundation of the initiative's work, and features interviews with 85 women leaders in 30 countries, as well as data analytics of the US Presidential Democratic primaries.

Lucina has written on gendered disinformation for leading think tanks like The Brookings Institution, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Her work has been featured in five different languages across some of the world’s most authoritative media outlets, including the BBC, The Washington Post, El Pais, Time, and The New York Times. Lucina has been recognized by Apolitical as one of the 100 Most Influential People in Gender Policy for her efforts to fight gendered disinformation and promote women’s rights.

Sub-specialities:

Online violence against women in politics; gendered and sexualized disinformation; women' political networks; girls' education and empowerment programs in Africa and Asia.