Pakistani origin lawyer wins Harry and Meghan’s Digital Civil Rights Award

Los Angeles: Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s Archewell Foundation and The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) have presented their 2023 Digital Civil Rights Award (and $100k) to lawyer and media executive Nabiha Syed in her role as CEO of The Markup, a non-profit that runs in-depth data-driven investigations into how big tech is changing our lives and privacy:

Nabiha Syed was born to parents who immigrated from Pakistan.

A Marshall Scholar, Syed co-founded the Media Freedom and Information Access legal clinic at Yale Law School, of which she is a graduate and a visiting fellow.

She handled libel, privacy, and newsgathering matters at BuzzFeed, a global media company.

Prior to BuzzFeed, Syed was the First Amendment Fellow at The New York Times. Syed also serves as adjunct faculty at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, and as the Vice Chair of the Student Press Law Center. She and her work have been featured in Slate, Cosmopolitan, and the Yale Law Journal. Under her leadership, The Markup published an investigation that revealed a third of the top 100 hospitals in the United States were sharing patients’ personal data with Facebook, which led to both the social media company and several hospitals involved being sued under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act.