Rahaf Harfoush

Rahaf Harfoush is a Strategist, Digital Anthropologist, and New York Times Best-Selling Author who focuses on the intersections between emerging technology, innovation, and digital culture. She is the Executive Director of the Red Thread Institute of Digital Culture and a member of France’s National Digital Council. Harfoush was recently named to the United Nations High Level Advisory on Artificial Intelligence and served on President Macron’s commission on AI’s impact on democracy. In 2021, she joined The Oxford Internet Institute as a Visiting Policy Fellow. Formerly, Harfoush was the Associate Director of the Technology Pioneer Program at the World Economic Forum in Geneva, where she helped identify disruptive startups that were improving the state of the world.

Harfoush is the co-author of “The Decoded Company: Know Your Talent Better Than You Know Your Customers.” It was published in early 2014 and was listed on the New York Times and USA Today bestseller lists. It won a 2015 Gold Axiom Award for Best Business Technology Book. "The Decoded Company" explores how big data is providing an unprecedented opportunity for organizations to dramatically improve their decision-making, increase their performance, and, most importantly, intentionally create happy and vibrant work cultures.

Her first book, “Yes We Did: An Insider’s Look at How Social Media Built the Obama Brand,” chronicled her experiences as a member of Barack Obama’s digital media team during the 2008 Presidential elections and explored how social networking revolutionized political campaign strategy. Her third book, “Hustle & Float: Reclaim Your Creativity and Thrive in a World Obsessed with Work,” was released in 2019. For her work on workplace culture, she has been featured by Bloomberg, The CBC, CTV, and Forbes.

In 2019, the prestigious “Les Napoleons” named Harfoush one of France's most innovative women. She was listed as one of the top future thinkers to shape the world by the Hay Literary Festival in 2017. The World Economic Forum has also recognized her as a Young Global Shaper and by the Women’s Forum for the Economy and Society as a Rising Talent for her thought leadership in the fields of digital culture and technology. In 2014, Harfoush was also named a “Canadian Arab to Watch” by the Canadian Arab Institute. Harfoush is a member of the German Marshall Network of Transatlantic Leaders.

Harfoush’s writing has been featured in HBR, Wired, The Globe and Mail, Fast Company, Monocle, The Financial Times, Techonomy, The Next Web, and many more. She is a frequent commentator on France24 and the CBC and has been speaking about Digital Culture and Technology since 2006. In her spare time, Harfoush enjoys Instagramming too many pictures of her dog Pixel, learning how to play the ukulele, and working on her second novel.