Strategic Advisory

Empowering people
in the age of AI‑enabled
cognitive threats

Resilience Lab works with foundations, public institutions, and technology partners to build strategies, programmes, and partnerships that strengthen national security.

Explore our approach →
Framework

Layers of Resilience

03 Cognitive Defence 02 Societal Resilience 01 Cognitive Resilience

Information threats do not succeed in a vacuum. Hostile actors exploit the vulnerabilities and cracks that already exist within society.

Protecting democracies therefore requires more than reacting to harmful content. It means strengthening the foundations on which hostile influence cannot survive.

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01 — Cognitive Resilience

Foundation

Think of it as the inner muscle. Cognitive resilience is the ability of individuals to withstand and adapt to stress and trauma, to spot manipulations, think critically, and act under pressure. Without it, no defence system is efficient enough.

Examples of RL's work

  • Manipulation and cognitive bias awareness training
  • Psychological resilience programmes
  • Individual resilience assessment
  • Leadership resilience programmes
  • Deepfake and AI-generated content detection training
02 — Societal Resilience

Architecture

This layer is about strong norms, trust in institutions, and shared narratives that amplify individual strength into collective stability. Resilient individuals alone are not enough. The architecture that connects them determines whether individual strength becomes collective resistance or remains isolated.

Examples of RL's work

  • Institutional media and communications strategy
  • Public memory and heritage programmes
  • National films, music, literature
  • Artist and creative sector mobilisation programmes
  • Social cohesion interventions
  • Pre-bunking work combining technology and media
03 — Cognitive Defence

Collective shield

This layer is about countermeasures that prevent adversaries from exploiting societal vulnerabilities. This is what governments do to protect societies from hostile influence, disinformation, and psychological operations.

Examples of RL's work

  • Mapping of adversarial narratives and patterns
  • Strategic communications designed to pre-empt and neutralise hostile narratives
  • Policy development for cognitive defence at national level
  • Training programmes for military, intelligence, and civil service personnel
  • Cross-sector coalitions for cognitive deterrence
Services

Areas of Work

01

Resilience Assessment

A bespoke diagnostic session that probes how institutions hold up under pressure, revealing hidden vulnerabilities in decision-making, coordination and response. Each engagement results in practical recommendations to strengthen resilience before it is tested in a real crisis.

02

Strategy & Positioning

Helping organisations understand where they fit in the security and democratic resilience landscape — and how to build a credible, differentiated position.

03

Programme Design

Turning concerns about trust, AI, and cognitive threats into fundable, executable programmes with a clear theory of change and measurable outcomes.

04

Advisory & Thought Leadership

Briefings, workshops, research synthesis, and guidance helping leaders make faster, better-informed decisions in a complex information environment.

05

Narrative & Engagement Design

Designing public-facing approaches that account for how people process fear, trust, identity, and belonging.

06

Partnership & Ecosystem Building

Connecting governments, technology companies, and civic actors around shared resilience goals.

Technology

Bringing AI-powered solutions to governments, foundations and companies.

Technology helps us work faster, but it does not replace human judgement. AI supports the Resilience Framework by accelerating large-scale monitoring and pattern detection — human expertise guides interpretation, ethical judgement and strategic choices.

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SENSE
Narrative Monitoring

Track emerging narratives and signals across the information environment before they deepen distrust, polarisation or public confusion.

MAP
Narrative & Ecosystem Mapping

Understand how harmful narratives move across communities, regions, and platforms — and where you can respond with the greatest care and impact.

DECIDE
Decision Support

Turn complex information signals into context-informed briefings that help foundations, companies and public-interest partners make better strategic choices.

ADVISE
Technology & Capability Advisory

Cut through a crowded market of tools and vendors to choose the partnerships and capabilities that can meaningfully strengthen information integrity and safeguard your reputation.

Founder

Valeria Kovtun

Valeria Kovtun

Valeria Kovtun has spent over a decade working at the intersection of information integrity, democratic resilience, and national security. She designed and led Filter, Ukraine's first governmental media literacy institution under the Ministry of Culture and Information Policy.

Filter educated millions of citizens on disinformation in times of active warfare and made media literacy a part of Ukraine's National Information Security Strategy.

Valeria also ran a cognitive resilience programme at Zinc Network, led strategic partnerships at OpenMinds, a cognitive defence tech company, and advised UNDP, OSCE, IREX, the British Council and others on policy and programme design.

As an Obama Foundation Scholar at Columbia University (2025–2026), Valeria studied the individual, societal, and institutional layers of resilience, which she incorporated into a framework that now sits at the core of Resilience Lab's approach.

She is a former BBC journalist and holds an MSc from the London School of Economics as a Chevening Scholar.

Visiting lecturer & guest speaker

LSE · University of Cambridge · UCL · Warwick University · University of York · Kiel University

Awards & Recognitions

Obama Scholars Program Columbia University United Nations RAF Fellowship Chevening Scholarship London School of Economics and Political Science

Collaborations

United Nations Development Programme BBC ITV News IREX Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe British Council Zinc Network
Selected Appearances & Media

Keynote — Baltic Miltech Summit · opens on YouTube