About us

Our mission

To equip stakeholders defending the online information ecosystem with tailor-made technological solutions and contextualised expert insights, to act with confidence.

10

Projects

25

Partners

28186

Coffees

Our projects

2020 / CheckFirst started

2021 / ODIL

2021 / CrossOver Monitoring (Belgium)

2022 / OKSA

2022 / 22vlalapub.fr

2023 / COM-PRESS

2023 / ObSINT

2023 / CrossOver Monitoring (Francophonie)

2024 / CrossOver Monitoring (Finland)

2025 / CrossOver Intelligence

2025 / Pravda dashboard

2025 / RADAR

2025 / Tutki

2026 / CheckFirst Import Connector

Timeline

Check First was founded in the first months of the global pandemic with the intention to help fight disinformation about COVID. Our work was noticed among others by the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie, which asked us to build ODIL, the platform gathering initiatives against disinformation in the French speaking world. Since then, Check First was associated to many high-level projects in content monitoring (CrossOver), or political ads monitoring (22vlalapub) as well as in the design of state of the art research tools for data analysis and investigations (OKSA).

Our vision

CheckFirst aspires towards an online information ecosystem where manipulation is harder to conduct, online harms stand exposed, decisionmakers make informed choices and malign actors are held accountable to democratic institutions.

Leadership

Since January 2026, CheckFirst is led by:

Hervé Letoqueux

Chief Executive Officer

Formerly CheckFirst's Chief Operating Officer, Hervé became CEO in January 2026. He was previously head of operations at VIGINUM, the French agency in charge of countering foreign digital interference, and co-founded OpenFacto, a French non-profit that trains journalists and activists in online investigation.

Nelly Pailleux

Chief Operating Officer

A co-founder of CheckFirst, Nelly returned as COO in January 2026. A journalist by training, she worked in economic and cultural media in France and Québec, then led the fact-checking newsroom Journalistes Solidaires from 2020. Between her two stints at CheckFirst she was COO of Les Surligneurs, a French legal fact-checking outlet, and she has served on the board of the European Fact-Checking Standards Network (EFCSN).

Shivika Sharma

Chief Policy Officer

A qualified lawyer and tech policy practitioner, Shivika leads CheckFirst's policy and regulatory work with institutions including the European Commission. She joined as Senior Manager, Digital Threats and Policy, after four years working on regulatory frameworks for information integrity at Logically, and presented RADAR, our open framework for documenting potential DSA infringements, at EU DisinfoLab's 2025 annual conference.