Wafa Ben-Hassine is a human rights advocate, a philanthropic funder, and an international lawyer that is working at the intersection of human rights and emerging technologies. She is currently a Responsible Technology Principal at Omidyar Network, a philanthropic social change venture. She is also a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). She holds a Juris Doctor (J.D.) with a certificate in international law from the University of Denver and a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) in Political Science, Public Law with a minor in Middle Eastern Studies from the University of California, San Diego, where she served as student body president 2010–11. She is the co-founder of Legal Education Advancement and Development (LEAD) Tunisia, a non-profit whose mission is to improve graduate legal education in the country. She is a licensed attorney in the State of New York.

Most recently, Wafa worked with the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and the International Finance Corporation. She was also the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Policy Manager for Access Now, a global non-profit organization dedicated to defending and extending the digital rights of users at risk. Wafa primarily writes about tech policy and governance, transparency in government, and the interaction of tech with universal human rights. Her work has been published and featured on CNN, WIRED Magazine, the Atlantic Council, the San Diego Union Tribune, the Globe and Mail, and Jadaliyya, and she is frequently interviewed by national and international media such as The Economist, BBC News, Vox, Reuters, France 24, NPR, CNN, Public Radio International (PRI), and Radio France International (RFI). She has worked as a legislative aide in the first-ever democratically elected Tunisian parliament in 2012, and assisted in the drafting of the Preamble of Tunisia's Constitution during the country's transitional phase. Wafa has also worked as a legal intern in the Appeals Chamber of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon in The Hague, Netherlands, and completed a summer associateship with a regional law firm based in Amman, Jordan.

Wafa has previously served as Co-Chair of the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council (GFC) on Human Rights and the Fourth Industrial Revolution (2019), and as a member of the GFC on Data Policy (2020). She has co-chaired the WEF’s annual MENA meeting in the Dead Sea, Jordan, in 2019, and is honored to have been a Global Shaper with the WEF’s leadership program for a full 8-year mandate (2012-2020). She served as a member of the Freedom Online Coalition’s Advisory Network group, the U.N. Arab Internet Governance Forum (IGF) Multistakeholder Advisory Group (AMAG), and as Vice President of the Tunisian Multi-stakeholder Advisory Group for the national IGF. She also served as an official delegate in The Summit of the Two Shores, a 2019 initiative of French President Emmanuel Macron.

Wafa was born in Knoxville, Tennessee. She has traveled extensively in Europe and the Middle East and North Africa, including volunteering in the Za’atari refugee camp in Jordan. She speaks fluent English, French, and Arabic, and is currently based in Washington, D.C.