Trust & Safety Coffee Chats

Trust & Safety Coffee Chats are one-on-one conversations designed to provide mentorship to current and aspiring trust and safety professionals. Hosts are volunteering their time and expertise to offer advice to job seekers and T&S professionals.

How It Works:

• Search for a host based on what you want to talk about.
• Sign-up using the host’s “Schedule a chat” button.
• Come prepared with questions and have a specific goal in mind.

Friendly Reminders:

• Be respectful of our hosts and their time.
• The TSPA Code of Conduct applies to all resources, spaces, and programming, even if you’re not a TSPA member.
• If you’re just getting started in T&S and want to learn more, we recommend reviewing Careers in T&S and the T&S Curriculum before scheduling.
• Hosts are not conducting formal interviews, offering referrals, providing product feedback, participating in interviews and/or user research, and/or acting on behalf of their employers or TSPA. If you schedule time and you’re not a current or aspiring T&S professional, a host reserves the right to cancel the appointment without notice.

If you’re a TSPA member looking for a way to help other folks on their journey in T&S, sign up to be a T&S Coffee Hours host!

Being new to T&S Being recently laid off BIPOC in T&S Compliance Cross-functional collaborations in T&S Data science Doing T&S at a start-up External engagement in T&S Growing in my T&S career Informational interview Interviewing tips Managing a T&S team Negotiating compensation Policy in T&S Privacy tune-up Product in T&S Research in T&S Resume review Role specific guidance T&S ecosystems T&S for infrastructure T&S for marginalized groups T&S in APAC T&S in EMEA T&S strategy Transitioning from academia to T&S Transitioning from government to T&S Transitioning from Healthcare to T&S Transitioning from NGO to T&S

Analytics & Data Science Communications Engineering Legal & Law Enforcement Non-Profit Operations Policy Product Public Policy Research

Yu-Lan Scholliers

she/her

Head of Product, Checkstep

Yu-Lan is currently Head of Product at Checkstep – a … Read more B2B SaaS startup focusing on building AI/Content Moderation tooling to help platforms with harmful content. Previously, she was in Product Data Science at Meta for five years, across different harm types (for measurement) but also specifically focusing on: Dangerous Organisations, Suicide & Self-Injury, Non-consensual Intimate Imagery, working with some amazing people across tech, policy and operations, focus on harm-specific insights but also transparency reporting, data privacy and compliance. She’s so grateful to be part of T&S, making the world a bit safer every day and she’s keen to meet this community, learn from you, and share what knowledge she has! Read less

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Brian Davis

he/him

Head of Trust & Safety, Dodgeball

Brian's mission is to help educate others in how to … Read more gain trust and better understand your customers. He’s a Trust & Safety leader specializing in building scalable teams and programs from scratch. Brian’s career has been built by simplifying complex ideas and incessantly asking, “Why?”. Currently, he’s the Head of Trust & Safety at Dodgeball where he is an internal advocate and educator for the Trust & Safety community. Read less

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Rumana Ahmed

she/her

Content Policy Manager, Policy Development & Enforcement, Meta

Rumana is currently a Content Policy Associate Manager at Meta, based … Read more in Bay Area, California. She has 7+ years of experience in Trust & Safety, across Operations, Abuse Specialization, and Policy Development & Enforcement. She has had the opportunity to be both, and IC and a manager – working on building teams from ground up. Having worked in APAC, EMEA, and now in the NA region, she has developed a deep understanding of both, the global landscape and the region-specific nuances of T&S issues. In her current role, she focuses on building and managing policy development & launch processes; with the goal to continually improve efficiency, legitimacy, and transparency. Read less

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James Freedman Aponte

he/him

Director Product Marketing, Business Integrity, Meta

James Freedman Aponte is Meta’s Director of Product Marketing for … Read more Integrity. In this role, he is focused on building products and policies that deliver safe, high-quality, and trusted experiences for users and businesses across ads, shopping, and messaging on Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. Prior to joining Meta, James helped build and grow products in various industries throughout his 20+ year career. Most recently, he led Google’s Trust & Safety Strategy and Operations team, where he managed the oversight of the organization’s global priorities. Previously, James co-founded Contratan.do, an online services marketplace in Latin America, and managed several technology and banking products at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. James also spent several years in the aerospace and defense industry as an engineer, designing night vision technologies and communication satellites. With a keen focus on equity and community impact, James has served on the Board of Directors of the Simmons YMCA and the Latin American Chamber of Commerce in Charlotte, North Carolina. He also co-chaired the Hispanic / LatinX Employee Resource Groups at Booz Allen Hamilton and Bank of America, and was named a Young Hispanic Corporate Achiever by the Hispanic Association on Corporate Responsibility. Read less

TSPA Members Only

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Kashyap Puranik

He/Him/His

Software Engineer, Trust Lab

I am a software engineer with over 12 years of … Read more experience in Trust and Safety. I’ve led Gmail’s anti-phishing team against a number of phishing, spam and malware attacks. I’ve worked on a number of content-free abuse at YouTube including scraping, engagement abuse, fraud, account take over, bulk account abuse and I’ve spent a year and half at a couple of start ups. I’m currently at Trust Lab building Trust and Safety engineering infra using Generative AI in TnS. I’ve seen many different kinds of adversaries and I understand the best strategies to counter them and I’m happy to share my experiences. Read less

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Tyler Bailey

He/Him

Sr. Director, Trust and Safety, Thumbtack

Tyler Bailey currently leads global Trust and Safety operations at … Read more Thumbtack. Since joining Thumbtack in 2014, he’s led his team through several growth stages, honing operational excellence and providing a human-first approach to Trust and Safety. Tyler has overseen the launch of a Thumbtack Guarantee, created highly effective tools, and built more inclusive Trust and Safety processes with his team. Tyler enjoys collaborating with Thumbtack alumni and sharing knowledge and expertise to drive Trust and Safety forward as an industry. Read less

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Farah Lalani

She/Her

Global VP, Trust & Safety Policy, Teleperformance

After working with policymakers and platform executives at the World … Read more Economic Forum on addressing online safety issues, I decided to get more in the nitty gritty of policy enforcement, safetytech, and scaled ops by joining one of the largest companies working to serve the tech industry with content moderation solutions. I currently lead Global Policy for the Trust & Safety business at Teleperformance, bringing together practical capabilities, insights, and enforcement recommendations from a Policy perspective to improve digital safety for my clients in the e-commerce, gaming, dating, video sharing, and social media sectors. Previously, I worked with the senior most government officials, business executives, academics and civil society experts to launch and lead the World Economic Forum’s Global Coalition for Digital Safety. I led the development of new policies, practices, and mechanisms for public-private cooperation to tackle harms online. I am passionate about creating a safer, more trustworthy internet for all users. I currently live in Zurich and have over 12 years of work experience, of which 5 years are T&S related. Read less

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Laura Dunne

she/her

Head of Music and Gated Content Policy, Spotify

Based in Dublin, Laura has 11+ years of experience in … Read more global content policy development & enforcement, with particular skills in working with UGC. She started in content moderation at Youtube and has worked in T&S policy at SoundCloud (5 years), Twitter (4.5 years), and now at Spotify, where she heads up policy development for music and gated content. Laura has expertise across a wide variety of safety issues (notably harm, privacy & freedom of expression) and has experience working in: strategic policy development, content moderation, public policy & advocacy, legal requests, crisis comms, incident management, policy comms, automation, and transparency reporting. Read less

TSPA Members Only

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Vaishnavi J

she/her

Head of Youth Wellbeing, Meta

Vaishnavi is Head of Youth Wellbeing at Meta, working with … Read more internal policy and product teams as well as external experts to ensure Meta continues to build safe and healthy experiences for young people. At Meta, Vaishnavi’s team focuses on issues impacting young people, including issues such as bullying & harassment, body image, teen mental health, and teen wellbeing. She was previously Instagram’s Head of Safety & Wellbeing where she focussed on keeping the Instagram community safe online. Vaishnavi previously led Twitter’s video safety policy efforts, was Twitter’s first head of safety policy in the Asia-Pacific region, and began her career in tech policy working on online child safety and privacy policy issues at Google.  

TSPA Members Only

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Vijai Radhakrishna

Program Manager, Google

Vijai is a people leader in the Intelligence team for … Read more Trust and Safety at Google. He has been working over half a decade across different teams across the Abuse and Trust and Safety horizontals from analyst to product manager to people leader. With a background in Data Sciences and Product Management from UC Berkeley, his focus is on using technological interventions to structure and attempt to solve abuse at scale. He is currently leading Intelligence Collection efforts to keep Google products informed of upcoming risks and identify creative solutions to maximize impact. When he’s not working, you can find him hiking, exploring food or looking up the new IoT or AI trend on the rise. He’s looking forward to getting to know all of you and supporting you on your journey! Read less

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Bethany Smith

she/her

Content Policy Manager, Niantic

Bethany started her tech policy career as a Fellow on … Read more the Twitter Public Policy team. While there, she discovered her love for Trust and Safety and was hired as a Site Policy Specialist. After almost three years, she joined Pinterest’s Content Policy team as a Content Policy Manager and then Senior Manager. She’s currently a Content Policy Manager at Niantic, the company that created PokémonGo. She is located in New York City EST. Read less

TSPA Members Only

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Jenny Bi

Integrity Data Manager, Pinterest

Jenny is passionate about empowering data scientists and data analysts … Read more in the Trust & Safety space. Jenny has applied data science to various areas such as legal consulting, fraud investigations, regulatory enforcement, and trust & safety. Besides data science, Jenny is also excited about leading and building teams, managing stakeholders, and developing internal and external partnerships. Jenny’s previous experience includes working as a lead data scientist at TikTok where she led a team of data scientists and data analysts focusing on proactive threat discovery and prevention. Read less

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