Savannah Badalich

Organization:	Civic Hall
Affiliation:	NextGen@ICANN
Stakeholder Group(s):	,|xyz|xyz| }}
Country:	USA
Email:	s.badalich@protonmail.com
LinkedIn:	Savannah Badalich
Twitter:	@sbadalich

Savannah Badalich is a public policy specialist and human-centered design practitioner with a focus on safety, trust, and inclusion on user-generated platforms. She is the Director of Education at Civic Hall where she leads the development of digital skills trainings, consulting, and other programs for nonprofits and government agencies to understand how to building, influence, and leverage technology for their communities. She is also a faculty instructor on human-centered design for CUNY TechWorks. She was previously a program manager and led the civic startup accelerator program, CivicXcel. She also consults for various human rights organizations on gender-based violence prevention and organized white supremacy.

She 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 is 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 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

She currently works as a program manager at Civic Hall – a collaborative community center and nonprofit dedicated to building technology for the public good and helping others do the same. She is the Director of Education at Civic Hall where she leads the development of digital skills trainings, consulting, and other programs for nonprofits and government agencies to understand how to building, influence, and leverage technology for their communities. She is also a faculty instructor on human-centered design for CUNY TechWorks. Savannah leads 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.

Savannah also develops programs, leads campaigns, 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 hosts an Internet-only radio show called The Gay Agenda, which showcases queer artists, politics, and humor.