Savannah Badalich

Organization:	Twitter
Affiliation:	NextGen@ICANN
Region:	North America
Country:	USA
Email:	savannahbadalich.com/contact
Website:	Website
LinkedIn:	Savannah Badalich
Twitter:	@sbadalich

Savannah Badalich is a policy and human-centered design specialist with a focus on safety, trust, and inclusion on user-generated platforms. She currently works at Twitter as a Product Trust Partner. She also consults for various human rights and advocacy organizations on gender-based violence prevention and organized white supremacy online. She previously worked as the Director of Education at Civic Hall and faculty instructor with CUNY TechWorks.

Savannah graduated from Columbia University’s graduate program in human rights focusing on how online platforms' features, content policies, and recommendation algorithms facilitate radicalization to white supremacy online. Savannah was a NextGen@ICANN61 member.

Education & Research

Savannah attended Columbia University’s Institute on the Study of Human Rights MA program with a concentration on extremism, human rights, and the Internet. Her thesis "Online Radicalization of White Women to Organized White Supremacy" explored how online platforms' content features, content policies, and recommendation algorithms facilitate the radicalization of white women to organized white supremacy. Her study focused on Youtube, reddit, and Twitter. Savannah was was one of fifteen participants selected as a NextGen@ICANN member to attend and presented her research at ICANN61 held in San Juan, Puerto Rico, from March 10th-15th, 2018.

Career History

Savannah currently works at Twitter as a Product Trust Partner. The Product Trust team works with Product Managers to ensure that new features are built more mindfully, incorporating trust & safety principles. She partners with PMs early in the development life cycle to design product features, determine whether any new policy or processes are needed to support the feature, and define technical requirements for any associated technology changes.

Savannah previously worked as the Director of Education at Civic Hall - a collaborative innovation center and nonprofit that advances the use of technology for the public good. In the role, she led the development and implementation of digital skills training programs for non-profits and government agencies. Savannah previously led the civic startup accelerator, CivicXcel, which provides civically minded professionals, activists, and entrepreneurs with hands-on training on using technology and design thinking to create a solution to a social issue. She also taught human-centered design as a faculty instructor with CUNY TechWorks.

Savannah also consults human rights, advocacy, and news organizations on online radicalization to white supremacy. She also develops programs and delivers educational workshops focused on gender-based violence prevention. She previously worked as a program manager at Breakthrough, a human rights organization working to make gender-based violence culturally unacceptable through culture change. At Breakthrough, she managed the fellowship program, action incubator project, and digital organizing strategy. She continues to work with Breakthrough as a program consultant and curriculum developer on their activist incubator program.

While at UCLA, she was at the forefront of the campus sexual assault movement and created a national sexual violence prevention organization – 7000 in Solidarity. Her activism was featured on CNN, Aljazeera America, MSNBC, Associated Press, Washington Post, and VICE. She previously consulted universities, legislators, activist groups, California State Legislature, and the Obama White House.

Arts

Savannah utilizes pop culture and media in her advocacy and personal projects. She has activated communities to create change toward gender equity, gender-based violence prevention, online privacy rights, and queer rights issues through photo and video campaigns. Some of her photo campaigns include the Refinery29-featured campaign #LetsPictureConsent on non-consensual photo sharing – otherwise known as revenge porn – and #AlcoholisNotConsent. Featured on BuzzFeed and CNN, the #AlcoholIsNotConsent photography campaign aimed to “change the ‘blame it on the alcohol’ mentality” as it regards to sexual assault. Some other projects include #EndTheStigma Mental Health Campaign, Kids Should Be Kids, Consent Grams, Consent Is* Graphic Series, Man Up? Photography Series, and #ItsOnUsUCLA Photography Campaign

Savannah also hosted an Internet-only radio show called The Gay Agenda, which showcased queer artists, politics, and humor.