Rebecca MacKinnon

Rebecca MacKinnon
MacKinnon in Beijing, 2005
Born	(1969-09-16) September 16, 1969 (age 47) Berkeley, California, U.S.
Alma mater	Harvard University (1991)
Occupation	journalist, author, researcher

Rebecca MacKinnon (born September 16, 1969) is an author, researcher, Internet freedom advocate, and co-founder of the citizen media network Global Voices Online. She is notable as a former CNN journalist who headed the CNN bureaus in Beijing and later in Tokyo. She is on the Board of Directors of the Committee to Protect Journalists, a founding board member of the Global Network Initiative and is currently director of the Ranking Digital Rights project at the New America Foundation's Open Technology Institute.

Rebecca MacKinnon was born in Berkeley, California. When she was three years old, MacKinnon's family moved to Tempe, Arizona, where her father Stephen R. MacKinnon took a job as Professor of Chinese History at Arizona State University. Her parents' academic research careers led her to pass most of her primary school years in Delhi, India, Hong Kong, and Beijing, China, before moving back to Arizona for middle and high school. She graduated from Tempe High in 1987.

She graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University in 1991 with a B.A. in Government. After graduating, she served as a Fulbright scholar in Taiwan, where she also worked as a Newsweek stringer.