Helle-Thorning Schmidt was elected the first female prime minister of Denmark in 2011, holding her nation’s highest office for four years, before later serving as chief executive of the charity Save the Children International.
Perhaps her most prominent public role today is as co-chair of Meta’s Oversight Board, a body set up by the social media giant’s chief executive Mark Zuckerberg that started working in 2020. It comprises a global group of journalists, academics and politicians that adjudicates on the most high-profile content moderation cases on platforms such as Facebook and Instagram.
Funded by a $280mn trust, the board has been cast as an independent, almost quasi-judicial body: a “supreme court” for online speech.