Gisela Pérez de Acha

Gisela Pérez de Acha is a supervising reporter and lecturer, who oversees teams of student investigators and journalists through Berkeley Law's Human Rights Center and Berkeley Journalism's Investigative Reporting Program. She is also a human rights lawyer and digital investigations trainer for the Human Rights Center and Amnesty International’s Digital Verification Corps, a global network of volunteers who fact-check social media posts about war crimes and human rights violations. She trains journalists and other professionals on methods for open source investigations, cybersecurity, and resiliency. Gisela is part of an Emmy award-winning team at the New York Times for her collaboration on the story about The Siege of Culiacán and a digital safety trainer with PEN America. She reported on extremism for "American Insurrection," a co-publication with ProPublica, Frontline, and the UC Berkeley Investigative Reporting Program, which won the George Polk Award in 2022. Born and raised in Mexico, Gisela speaks fluent Spanish, English, French, and Portuguese. She has a master’s degree from Berkeley Journalism.