Anneke Buffone — SPARQNOW

At-a-Glance

Founder of CLARA (Certification Lab for App Risk Assessment), an independent evaluation and safety testing body for social media and AI systems serving youth.
Led Cross-Meta Age Assurance research across Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp (3B+ users).
Pioneered LLM-based adversarial testing for scalable safety evaluation.
Holds a PhD in Social Psychology from UB and completed a Postdoc at UPenn World Well-Being Project.
Serves as a Stanford Affiliated Researcher at the Neely Center.
Has 12 years of experience bridging Social Science with ML Systems.

Biography

Anneke Buffone is the founder of CLARA (Certification Lab for App Risk Assessment), an independent evaluation and safety testing body for social media and AI systems serving youth. She co-founded CLARA with Courtney Froehlig, PhD, and Zack Prager, aiming to provide independent expertise in youth protection after observing misaligned incentives within large technology companies.