About the event:
The webinar “Holistic Digital Security and Early Career Human Rights Researchers: Inspiring Industry Change” will bring together panelists from academia, industry, and non-profits to discuss the external threats facing digital investigators from under-represented communities and ways to counter those challenges. Addressing the issue of digital security within the field of human rights investigations requires both an awareness of the problems and an industry that is willing to strive towards equity and inclusion. Join us as we discuss the work of the Human Rights Investigations Lab at the Human Rights Center (UC Berkeley) and the Research Center for the Americas (UC Santa Cruz) and hear from early career professionals on inspiring industry change. Closed captioning and an ASL interpreter will be provided.
Program Schedule
Segment 1: Defining Holistic Security
Panelists:
Steve Trush (Owner/Founder of West County Labs)
Steve is the founder of West County Labs and an expert in holistic security and open source research, supporting government, academia, and the nonprofit world. Steve was one of the founding directors of UC Berkeley’s Citizen Clinic, the world’s first public interest cybersecurity clinic to protect civil society from digital oppression.
Rachael Cornejo (Cyber Risk Consultant, Deloitte)
Rachael Cornejo is passionate about helping individuals and communities understand and actively participate in their own security. She is currently a cyber risk consultant at Deloitte. Previously, Rachael designed security tools for investigative journalists and acted as a security consultant for nonprofits through Citizen Clinic at UC Berkeley’s Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity.
Pearlé Nwaezeigwe (Product Policy Manager SSA at TikTok)
Pearle is a Nigerian lawyer, she obtained her LL.B from the prestigious University of Lagos and obtained her Master’s in International Human Rights Law from UC Berkeley. Her interests are in Human rights and Technology which led her to her current role as a Policy Manager Africa at TikTok. Her role entails creating inclusive policies that fosters free expression amongst users in 47 countries. Her area of expertise include policy development, responsible innovation, policy enforcement and trust and safety
Moderator: Alexa Koenig, Executive Director of the Human Rights Center, UC Berkeley
Alexa Koenig is the Executive Director of UC Berkeley’s Human Rights Center (winner of the 2015 MacArthur Award for Creative and Effective Institutions) and a lecturer in the schools of law and journalism. She co-founded Berkeley’s Investigations Lab, which trains students in online fact-finding methods, and directed development of the Berkeley Protocol on Digital Open Source Investigations. Her most recent books include Digital Witness: Using Open Source Methods for Human Rights Investigations, Advocacy and Accountability (co-edited 2020), and Graphic: Trauma and Meaning in our Online Lives (co-authored, forthcoming 2023).
Segment 2: Inspiring Industry Change
Panelists:
Karin Goh (Senior Software Engineer at Salesforce)
Raised in Singapore, Karin moved to California to pursue her undergraduate studies at UC Berkeley where she graduated with a computer science degree and human rights minor. She now works as a software engineer at Salesforce and volunteers with Code Nation, teaching web development and mentoring high school students from underrepresented and underserved communities.
Leigh Honeywell (CEO and co-founder of Tall Poppy)
Leigh is the co-founder and CEO of Tall Poppy, where she helps companies protect their employees from online harassment. She was previously a Technology Fellow at the ACLU, and also worked at Slack, Salesforce.com, Microsoft, and Symantec. Leigh has a BSc from the University of Toronto.
Moderator: Sofia-Lissett Kooner, Lab Coordinator of the Human Rights Center, UC Berkeley
Sofia Kooner is the Human Rights Center’s Investigations Lab Coordinator. Sofia studied Critical Race & Ethnic Studies and Sociology with an intensive concentration in Global Information and Social Enterprise studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. In her role at the investigations lab, Sofia supports undergraduate and graduate students managing open source investigations all over the world.
Segment 3: Managing Security Risks & Well-Being Online
Panelists:
Abir Ghattas (Associate Director, Information Security of Human Rights Watch)
Abir Ghattas is a feminist, technologist, and the Associate Director for Information Security at Human Rights Watch. She provides strategic and operational oversight for managing information security risks that HRW staff face in their work. Abir also founded Hammam Radio, A feminist participatory radio, launched from Berlin where she is based.
Nikita Gupta (Resiliency Expert and Trainer) with UCSC students Monica Mikhail and Sydney Eliot
Nikita Gupta, MPH, specializes in transforming trauma through healing and resiliency in educational as well as public and private settings. As a leader in the field for over 24 years, Nikita’s work is rooted in practices of embodied empowerment and social healing. She is especially committed to working with helping professionals, activists, and educators in caring for themselves while caring for others. Through this work, she aims to infuse infrastructures for resilience that support us in bravely moving through the unknown, while finding joy in each day.
Monica Mikhail is a Ph.D. candidate in the Anthropology Department and a Graduate Student Researcher for the Human Rights Investigations Lab at UC Santa Cruz.
Sydney Eliot is a fourth-year Politics major at UC Santa Cruz. She is the Chief of Staff to the UCSC Student Body President and a researcher at the Human Rights Investigation Lab at UCSC. Sydney has been a member of the HR Lab for three years and hopes to pursue a career as a human rights researcher.
Moderator:
Sylvanna Falcón, Director of the Research Center for the Americas, UC Santa Cruz
Dr. Sylvanna M. Falcón is an Associate Professor in the Department of Latin American and Latino Studies, Director of the Research Center for the Americas, and Founder and Director of the Human Rights Investigations Lab for the Americas at the University of California, Santa Cruz Professor Falcón is an award-winning author of Power Interrupted: Antiracist and Feminist Activists inside the United Nations (University of Washington Press, 2016 - awarded the 2016 National Women's Studies Association Gloria E. Anzaldúa Book Prize). She is the co-editor of Precarity and Belonging: Labor, Migration, and Noncitizenship [Rutgers University Press, 2021] and New Directions in Feminism and Human Rights [Routledge, 2011].
