Anna Varfolomeeva

Anna Varfolomeeva has spent over a decade trying to answer one question: how does information actually work on people? That curiosity has taken her from breaking news reporting to managing newsrooms, from analyzing state propaganda to studying the cognitive mechanisms that make manipulation possible in the first place.

A native Russian speaker with professional Mandarin, Anna has reported from inside Russian- and Chinese-language information environments that most Western analysts access only in translation. That proximity shaped her understanding of how narratives are built and why they land.

At CSI, Anna leads communications — from internal strategy and organizational voice to external outreach that connects the institute's research with the audiences that need it most.

She believes the most important thing cognitive security can do right now is make itself legible, because the people who most need to understand how they're being manipulated are rarely reading academic papers.