Cameron Hickey
Two decades documenting how the world works. Now building the instruments to measure and repair it.
Leadership
Chief Executive Officer & Executive Director
National Conference on Citizenship
Leads a nonpartisan, Congressionally chartered nonprofit that tracks, measures, and promotes civic participation in America. Raised $15M across programs in three and a half years — grants, memberships, sponsorships, and program services — against a $4M+ annual operating budget, moving the organization from a deficit budget in FY2025 to a $1.2M revenue beat in FY2026. Leads 10 full-time staff and 25+ contractors across the Algorithmic Transparency Institute, the Civic Health Index, the American Conversation Project, and the Annual Conference on Citizenship, plus the research, product, and engineering teams that built five production platforms in that time.
Founder & Director, Algorithmic Transparency Institute
National Conference on Citizenship
Founded to build technology, gather data, and generate insight about how platforms shape civic discourse. Raised $8M since 2019 to develop and support the work, and created Junkipedia, now CivicLens.
Education
Photography & Economics
Bard College
Taught himself to program through the late 1990s and was hired by a first-generation internet company before turning 21, while still an undergraduate.
Awards
News & Documentary Emmy Award
NOVA — Manhunt: Boston Bombers
The film aired in 2013; the award was most likely presented in 2014. Exact year and category still to confirm, so no award year is claimed here.
Newhouse Mirror Award
PBS NewsHour — the four-part junk news investigation
Year still to confirm; the series aired in 2018.
Magic Grant, Brown Institute for Media Innovation
For Contrast Agent, investigating inauthentic activity on social media and recommendation algorithms.
Knight Foundation Prototype Fund grant
Funded NewsTracker, the tool that became Junkipedia.
Boards & affiliations
Board of Directors
Lexington Observer
Local nonprofit news outlet.
Expert Working Group, Publicly Available Platform Data
Knight-Georgetown Institute
Co-author of the resulting framework, Better Access.
Advisory Group
Civic Information Index, Listening Post Collective
Affiliate
Tow Center for Digital Journalism, Columbia University
Journalism
Producer, Cinematographer & Editor
PBS NewsHour
Science and technology field production with correspondents Miles O'Brien and Soledad O'Brien. Series producer on the 2018 four-part junk news investigation.
Producer & Cinematographer
NOVA, WGBH
Nine NOVA specials, including the Emmy-winning Manhunt: Boston Bombers.
Founder & Director
Pattern Films
Produced, shot, and edited documentaries for PBS, BBC, Channel 4, The New York Times, Al Jazeera, and others.
Producer, Director & Cinematographer
The New York Times, Moyers & Company, American Experience, WNET, PBS World
Research
Technology Manager & Research Fellow
Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School
Team lead of the Information Disorder Lab, monitoring mis- and disinformation through the 2018 U.S. midterm elections. Built the tooling and methodology to identify, collect, and analyze problematic content across platforms. The lab concluded in April 2019.
Education
Not yet listed. See src/content/cv.yaml.