Hi, I'm Yasodara Córdova.
I'm a nerd with a strong appetite for technology, culture, and politics, and for how they interact as complex systems. I help organizations understand, design, and fix data-driven systems, with deep experience in data and AI, security, privacy, and digital identity in public, private, or mixed spaces.
I'm a researcher and builder with a background in industrial design, a Master's from Harvard (full scholarship), and many parallel works that shaped the way I work. I move across sectors out of curiosity. My work has taken me to Harvard, the World Bank, TikTok, startups, and governments; and I consult for private companies too, sometimes. Earlier in my career, I co-founded Calango Hacker Clube, was CEO of Operação Serenata de Amor, and co-chaired a World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) working group at the W3C Brazil office. At Harvard, I was a fellow and later an affiliate at the Berkman Klein Center. I currently sit on the investment board at Co-Develop Foundation, where I help decide what gets funded and why.
I'm pragmatic, hands-on, and equally comfortable with theory and execution. I focus on what actually works: practical, measurable ways to make systems more open, fair, and useful for real people.
I'm a solo parent to a teenager. I hold dual Italian and Brazilian citizenship, and I work globally and remotely.
Most systems that fail weren't broken by accident. We all live inside one vast, constantly interacting system, and it needs continuous, deliberate redesign for the better. That's usually what I'm there to figure out.
Work
Digital Identity Systems
How states and platforms decide who you are. I work on the architecture of national and cross-border ID systems, the standards and credentials layered on top of them, and the question of what gets recorded about a person just so they can prove something ordinary. [Add 1–2 named projects or reports.]
Privacy Engineering & PETs
Privacy as something you build, not something you promise. Threat modeling, data minimization, and privacy-enhancing technologies applied to systems that already exist and already hold too much. Much of this work happened inside large organizations, where the constraint is rarely the math. [Add 1–2 examples.]
AI Governance
Who gets to decide how automated systems are used on people, and what evidence they owe the public. I sit between the people writing the rules and the people writing the code, and try to make each side legible to the other. At Co-Develop, this includes deciding what digital public infrastructure gets funded. [Add 1–2 examples.]
Speaking
I speak often, to very different rooms: ministers and civil servants, engineers, foundations, students. The talk changes; the argument mostly doesn't. Systems that hold data about people are political objects, and they can be redesigned on purpose.
I'm most useful when the audience is mixed and the subject is contested: digital identity, the actual engineering of privacy, and how public institutions should adopt AI without outsourcing their judgment. I take questions seriously and I don't read slides.
For invitations, write to me. I speak in English, Portuguese, and Spanish.
Writing
In construction.