Author Archives: Charlotte Willner

Our 2023 Priorities: A Note From TSPA’s Executive Director

Happy New Year! TSPA’s 2022 was a whirlwind of growth, learning, and expansion. We grew our team from two to five, launched independent membership, and hosted nine in-person meet & greets and thirteen virtual events! We also hosted TrustCon for the first time and co-hosted the Trust & Safety Research Conference through our sibling organization, the Trust & Safety Foundation.

It is a true joy to watch people get connected through TSPA, whether it’s at TrustCon, over Slack, in our working groups, or through one of our virtual or in-person events. Many of you have heard me say before that, when two trust and safety professionals meet for the first time and realize they have this work in common, there’s a magical spark of recognition between them that can lay the foundation for a lifelong relationship of trust and respect. TSPA exists to foster these kinds of connections. Our top priority last year was to help the community connect in this way – and wow, you all sure did! 

With so many people connecting in new ways over new ideas, we’ve gotten a lot of amazing suggestions about what TSPA’s 2023 should look like. We’re so grateful to everyone who weighed in with such thoughtful reflections on the year’s possibilities. With your feedback, we are focused on a few key priorities. This year, we are committed to provide you with offerings that will help you progress in your profession; keep you connected with your peers in an ever-shifting landscape; and provide a welcoming and nurturing place for our global community to grow. Here’s what you can expect from TSPA in 2023:

Programming

We will focus on three strategic themes in our 2023 programming: community, practice, and profession. 

  • Community programs focus on facilitating connections and relationships between T&S professionals, prioritizing TSPA members.
  • Practice programs focus on the practice of T&S, bringing together different professionals in discussion and in collaboration to legitimize the work T&S practitioners do every day and to further advance the field. 
  • Profession programs focus on supporting both current and aspiring T&S professionals, providing professional development opportunities and broadening and diversifying the pipeline. 

Our cornerstone event will be  TrustCon 2023 (July 11-13 in San Francisco). In addition to TrustCon, we’ll also host an EMEA Summit in Dublin in H1 and an APAC Summit in Singapore in H2 to ensure that we reach our global membership. These regional summits are intended to support the goals and needs of these specific communities and will be tailored in collaboration with TSPA members in EMEA and APAC. (If you want to volunteer to help, read on!)

We’re also committed to hosting four Meet & Greet events this year. Based on the 2023 planning survey results (n = 91), we’ve prioritized the following cities: Washington D.C., Austin, TX, and Paris, France. We’ll also host a Meet & Greet somewhere in the APAC region while our staff is in that part of the world for the Singapore Summit (we’re leaning towards India because that’s where we have the most TSPA members, but we welcome your suggestions). Finally, we’ll host another Meet & Greet in Miami, FL in November, in conjunction with our annual team planning retreat. If you’re a member and are interested in co-hosting a Meet & Greet in any of these cities (or in one that’s not on the list yet!), check out the “Get Involved” section below. 

Resources

We will continue to develop and maintain resources that support T&S professionals and benefit the larger T&S ecosystem. This year, the T&S Curriculum Working Group will be publishing three new chapters, we’ll launch our global compensation survey and the first version of our T&S Vendor Directory, and we’ll support up to four new working groups. Don’t forget: there’s also the T&S Library and Careers in T&S page, which are continually updated—not to mention our incredibly popular T&S Coffee Hours, which we’ll be refining and expanding this year.

Get Involved

Yes, this is a lot! But we’re excited to bring you all these events, resources, and programming in 2023, and we hope that you’ll be part of that work. There are so many ways for you to get involved this year.

If you’re a TSPA member, you can:

  • Submit a proposal for TrustCon 2023.
  • Help develop the EMEA Summit in Dublin in May, by joining the EMEA Programming Committee.
  • Help develop the APAC Summit in Dublin in September, by keeping an eye on the (N)SFW newsletter for when we call for APAC Summit Programming Committee members.
  • Join a TSPA working group. Applications for the 2023 working groups will open in early February.
  • Volunteer to share your time and expertise as a panelist or guest speaker during a virtual event. Email programs@tspa.org with details on what you’d like to share with your fellow members
  • Subscribe to our newsletter to learn more about upcoming events and opportunities this year.

If you’re not a TSPA member (yet!), you can:

Thank you, again, to everyone who participated in this year’s planning process. If you have programming ideas that didn’t make the cut this year, email programs@tspa.org with your thoughts. We’re already planning for next year, and we’d love to hear from you!

Finally, a very special thank you to everyone who makes TSPA’s work possible. We are so grateful to our corporate supporters for shouldering so much of our operating cost, and to all our members who give so much back to this community. This is truly a special place, and we are honored to be building it with you.

All my gratitude,

Charlotte