As Facebook has become more of a part of the daily lives of people around the world, it has naturally become a focus of attention for policy makers. The policy team is a network of people with expertise in different countries and areas of public policy who are able to engage with policy makers and respond to their concerns.

In many cases, the primary need is for information and our team prides itself on being able to translate between the rather specialist languages of technology and government. Our goal is to help deliver policy outcomes that we believe to be in the public interest - we want to see innovation thrive and for us to be able to fulfil our mission of helping people connect with each other.

For anyone interested in policy making around technology and the internet, the Facebook public policy team is an ideal home. We get to deal with some of the most interesting issues across a broad playing field. These include content regulation, privacy, telecommunications policy, online child safety, economic issues and the evolution of politics. There are few areas of technology policy where Facebook is not an interested party.

The importance of public policy is recognised across the company so we get to work with a wide variety of internal partners. We sit with the communications team in the organisation and work very closely with teams like legal, community operations and product development. This partnership approach is one of the special things about working at Facebook - you interact directly with many peers rather than running everything through a hierarchy.

As a good illustration of the kind of challenge we face, I am spending a lot of time dealing with government concerns about online hate speech at the moment. Social media services have created unprecedented opportunities for people to express themselves and in most cases that expression makes a positive contribution to public discourse. In a small minority of cases, people express themselves in ways that are unwelcome and potentially illegal within their community. As the public debate about immigration has become more significant in Europe, some of this has played out on Facebook and policy makers have become concerned that some people are crossing the line and promoting hate speech.

We have worked intensively to understand this issue and to ensure our policies and processes are responsive to public concerns. It is complex - for example laws on hate speech vary widely across different countries and the lines between legal and illegal speech are not always clear. We have built relationships with many interested parties including the European Commission, several national governments, NGOs who work in this area and legal experts. And we work closely with our internal partners like the large teams who review content people report to us.

As you can imagine, the wide range of issues means we are never bored in the public policy team. But it's not all work. I have found that I have more music and dancing in my life than ever before - it's a great way to unwind. The public policy team's karaoke nights in particular have become legendary but you'd have to join the team to find out more.

I lead the policy teams in DACH (Germany, Austria and Switzerland) and Southern Europe (France, Spain and Portugal) regions. These are countries that have strong democracies with active governments and regulators and that have significant influence on EU institutions and policy.

As policy professionals, our role in this region is to help policy-makers understand the opportunities that can be created through innovation. We focus on demonstrating the economic and societal value of empowering people and businesses to be connected in new, expanded ways. This is best demonstrated by people, communities, businesses and NGOs who use our services - Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Oculus - to create something new or to build new solutions for the challenges they face. For example, in France we are partnering with two regions on a pilot programme to help them develop a digitization strategy.

One challenge we face is around public scrutiny on the kind of content that people share on our services and on Facebook's content policy. Like everyone in Europe, I have been shocked and saddened by the repetitive terror attacks over the last three years and I am proud of the work the team do every day to tackle the activities of those groups on Facebook. Our commitment to countering terrorism is such that we have increased our expertise and resources substantially over the past number of years to tackle these new challenges.

Another area of focus for us is the increase of hate speech in Germany. We have made a lot of progress in detecting, reviewing and removing this from our platform but we can only really succeed if governments, NGOs, experts and local communities also embrace the underlying societal challenges that leads to hate speech. Therefore, our team spends a lot of time working with those stakeholders, especially experts and NGOs.

History and more recent events have shaped cultural attitude and legislation towards personal data, online content and innovation. For example, privacy sentiment in France or Germany is shaped by the history of the 20th century and the second world war. We want to help people and policy makers truly understand the privacy controls we provide our users to enable them to control what they are sharing and who they are sharing with on Facebook. As part of our work in the area of privacy we are piloting new approaches that centre on the user and helping them to understand and interact with their own data. In Germany, we hosted a design jam with students, experts, start-ups and regulators to find new and improved ways of approaching privacy design.

When I talk about Facebook, I often say that it is where we hear the pulse of the world beat as it is where people across the world discuss political developments and raise awareness of issues in society. Policy roles at Facebook span across an incredibly large array of issues, from privacy and regulation to online content, hate speech and fake news.

A year ago, we were focused on prevention of radicalisation and still are. In Germany, we are focused on hate speech, in Italy it is safety online. These are important ever-changing issues and I come to work everyday prepared to face the unexpected. We must be agile in these jobs but we are also deeply thoughtful; we understand that with success comes big responsibility and our jobs are about balancing empowerment and responsibility. We take criticism on board, we explain, we listen, we learn where and when we fail, we improve as we go.

No one was talking about fake news two years ago, now it is top of mind for many, including us. In the recent elections in France we, the policy team, worked with colleagues from the product and engineering teams to do our part to ensure a fair election. We doubled down our effort to ensure the integrity of Facebook users, reduce fake news and we enrolled 30,000 suspected fake accounts into check points prior to the elections. We take great pride in these achievements.

I was lucky to work with an exceptional leader, a Minister for Science and Space, early in my professional life. He taught me the value of working collegially and the art of bringing people together to make big decisions. I was able to work with Nobel Prize winners and people who were smarter and far more knowledgeable than I was. It was an incredible professional start and I kept looking for jobs that would give me that similar kick. I was also part of the fast development of Microsoft, where I spent 17 years of my career before joining Facebook. I was working at an international level and across a large variety of roles which included Corporate Affairs, Marketing, Business Operations, Research and Government Affairs. I figured out that execution is the hard part of the job and that the ability to achieve strong execution makes the difference between being an okay company and a great company. It was fascinating to be part of the development of a medium-size company that turned into one of the largest in the world.

The calling to Facebook was all about surfing that wave again. It is a truly extraordinary company. It really motivates me to work with people at all levels of the company on tackling challenges while maintaining a strong sense of togetherness. There is an open culture driven by the openness of the top management which I find inspiring along with the awareness of the impact we have as a company - all of this makes a job at Facebook absolutely unique. As a policy lead, I truly think having a policy role at Facebook is one of the most exciting jobs someone can dream of.

On days off I like to take it easy and relax. I often spend time reading and reflecting on the events of the world. After the first round of terrorist attacks in Paris, I read every book I could find of jihadism and I talked to every expert who would talk to me. I wanted to understand what happened and get my head around it.

I also like to let my mind wander on long hikes and bike rides or immerse myself in art (I live in Paris so I am spoiled that way). I am a yoga addict which helps me let things go in the instant. But I cannot be inactive for long as I get bored easily. When we have a bit more time my husband and I sail or hike across the world. I look forward to my 'recharge' time next year - at Facebook after 5 years you get an extended period of time off. Although I have travelled the world I have never been to India and I always wanted to set aside some time to visit this country. During recharge, I plan to spend a month in India and I cannot wait!