Sarah Gardner

Sarah Gardner is the Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of the Heat Initiative, a collective effort of concerned child safety experts and advocates encouraging leading technology companies to detect and eradicate child sexual abuse materials on their platforms.

Founder & CEO

The Heat Initiative

Sarah Gardner is the Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of the Heat Initiative, a collective effort of concerned child safety experts and advocates encouraging leading technology companies to detect and eradicate child sexual abuse materials on their platforms. This year, she launched Heat’s multimillion-dollar effort to hold Apple accountable for its inaction in removing child abuse from iCloud. Sarah previously spent 10 years at Thorn, an organization that builds technology to combat online child sexual abuse, where she was integral to its growth from a small, start-up effort to a multi-million dollar nonprofit. As Vice President of External Affairs, she helped develop a plan to eliminate child sexual abuse material from the internet which spurred a $63M investment in the organization through the TED Audacious Prize. Sarah also worked at Free the Slaves, an organization empowering local organizations to end modern forms of slavery. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband, three kids, and a bulldog.

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Episode #

38

The Heat Initiative: Combatting Online Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) with Sarah Gardner

The right to privacy is one of the most important provisions of the U S constitution, and fundamental to everyone’s ability to live freely and follow their dreams. However, with social media and cloud-based storage becoming ever more and more prevalent in our culture, issues of online privacy trust, and safety have emerged as one of the key challenges of our day. What seemed simple a generation ago, is now a highly nuanced and complex issue that includes technology, common sense, law enforcement, and personal responsibility. Under Sarah’s leadership, the Heat Initiative has launched a multi-channel campaign to pressure Apple, and eventually other technology providers as well, to do the right thing - to implement policies and technologies to help eliminate harmful sexual abuse material from their platforms and to bring the perpetrators of this type of sex trafficking to justice.

The right to privacy is one of the most important provisions of the U S constitution, and fundamental to everyone’s ability to live freely and follow their dreams. However, with social media and cloud-based storage becoming ever more and more prevalent in our culture, issues of online privacy trust, and safety have emerged as one of the key challenges of our day. What seemed simple a generation ago, is now a highly nuanced and complex issue that includes technology, common sense, law enforcement, and personal responsibility. Under Sarah’s leadership, the Heat Initiative has launched a multi-channel campaign to pressure Apple, and eventually other technology providers as well, to do the right thing - to implement policies and technologies to help eliminate harmful sexual abuse material from their platforms and to bring the perpetrators of this type of sex trafficking to justice.

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