Meet the Fresh Faces of Team CommUNITY
The past year has been incredibly difficult, bringing it with challenges but also new opportunities. For us, this has meant more time refocusing our approach, and strengthening the ways we best support the beautiful community we serve, who are responsible for defending the digital rights of people worldwide.
To help us blaze this new path, we have hired several amazing humans that come to us with diverse skills, vibrant life experiences, and sparkly wisdom. Our team growth ultimately means that we will better meet the needs of the various individuals and communities that make up our global ecosystem.
Given the many changes, we are delighted to present to you complete Team CommUNITY team, in alphabetical order:
Danae Tapia, Community Manager
We first met Danae Tapia when she proposed hosting Digital Witchcraft and A Feminist Approach to Period Trackers sessions at the Internet Freedom Festival, both of which were wildly popular. Her magical approach to the intersection of technology and spirituality, made her the perfect candidate for TC. In her role, Danae will be overseeing our global community strategy and initiatives, as well as playing a pivotal role helping onboard and amplify new voices, while supporting existing community members. You can find her hosting our weekly Glitter Meetups, facilitating the Community Knowledge Shares, and bringing sparkles to our virtual community spaces.
Danae is a feminist writer, multimedia artist and technologist. She was born in the Chilean working class, and currently resides in Rotterdam where she is a lecturer of Hacking and Autonomous Practices at the Willem de Kooning Academy. She is also the founder of The Digital Witchcraft Institute, an arts organization, which was founded during her fellowship with the Mozilla Foundation focused on collecting and showcasing advance non-conforming approached to the use of tech. She is passionate about and works at the intersection of posthuman technology, deep migrations and climate justice. In the past, she has been project director in organizations like Riseup Collective, Coding Rights, and Derechos Digitales. She was also advisor at FRIDA the Young Feminist Fund.
She’ll always be happy to talk about Charli XCX, Japanese stationery, Iyengar yoga, non-human animals, the film Andrei Rublev, Gilles Deleuze, Yukio Mishima and Gabriela Mistral.
Jared Hatch (he/him), Digital Communications Manager
Jared has played a historical allyship role with our project. He provided us space in New York when we were hosting Techno Activism Third Mondays (TA3M) and helped connect us to many US based civil society actors and activists. We love him for his unique ability to find unique and interesting people, and weave them together to create otherworldly experiences. That's why we were so happy to bring him on TC, where he will be overseeing all of our digital communications strategy, including the Digital Rights Newsletter, Job Board, website/wiki and Blog, and other online homes.
Jared is an experiential content and communications marketer focused on creating organizational value that is global and socially responsible. He has extensive experience building engaged and collaborative community networks through content and diverse events. He has a multimedia art and design background, and is active in art and activism communities. In his previous job at Thoughtworks, among the many things he did was identify and bring on artists doing pioneering work at the intersection of art and technology.
Jared is always happy to talk about progressive ideas in community building, contemporary art, architecture, and new technologies.
Rima Sghaier (she/her), Program Manager
Until recently, Rima was our volunteer MENA Regional Lead, who's loving approach to community building has resulted in many moments of solidarity and mutual support in the last year. However, Rima has a long history in the digital rights community, and serving as an important feminist voice in the space. We knew she would be the perfect fit as our Senior Program Manager. In this role, she oversees our day-to-day community operations, making sure TC staff are well taken care of and keeping us on track in regards to our program implementation. As part of the leadership team, she also plays a pivotal role in advising the overall strategy of the team.
Rima is an intersectional feminist activist, researcher, policy anaylist, and an avide adocate for Itnernet Freedom. Her past work and research focused on the intersection of human rights, gender, policy and tech. She has consulted for various digital rights organizations on issues of digital rights and digital safety in the SWANA region, such as Access Now and the Gulf Center for Human Rights (GCHR). Prior to joining us, she worked with GlobaLeaks program managing and contributing to international projects to support NGOs, media, and investigative journalists to create secure whistleblowing platforms. In 2019, she was an Open Technology Fund Digital Integrity Fellow, where she focused on auditing and supporting the digital security skills of at-risk communities in MENA countries.
She’ll always be happy to talk about technofeminism, Tunisian food recipes, Appleseed manga and poetry in the languages she can read.
Sandy Ordonez (she/her), Head of Team (and Glitter)
Sandy Ordonez is best known in the digital rights community for her love of all things glitter and for her fierce community management skills. She is the founder of TC, best known for organizing the Internet Freedom Festival. In her role, she oversees the team, providing the strategic strategy, making sure that the lights are on, and helping cultivate new partnerships, creating lines of solidarities with new communities, and spreading glitter.
Sandy has over 20+ years of experience working at the intersection of technology, community engagement, and human rights. She was one of the first Latinas to occupy leadership positions in the open source community, notably having served as the first Director of Communications for the Wikimedia Foundation. As a native New Yorker and daughter of immigrants, throughout her career she has worked towards elevating the voices of marginalized communities. She is also a sought after expert on secure community building and engagement, and sits on the board of many digital rights organizations. She is a recipient of the Hispanic Leadership Award by Fundacion Carolina.
She will always be happy to talk about her large goddess collection, bi-cultural identity and immigrant communities, Halloween (her favorite holiday), scary movies, and 90s New York music.
Selma Zaki (she/her), Director of Community Mental Health
Selma Zaki comes to us from our Lebanese community, who had nothing but praises for her work and approach when they referred her to us. We felt like we found a precious gem when we met her thanks to her background in social justice, community organizing, and experience providing mental health services to BIPOC and marginalized communities (amongst others). In this role, Selma will be overseeing our Community Health Report, designing and providing individual and group therapy sessions, providing consultation to networks and organizations, and designing psychoeducational resources, among others.
Selma is a licensed Mental Health Counselor with experience in providing therapy services between practices, community health centers and hospitals. She also has experience conducting qualitative research, having been published in the Journal of Counseling Psychology for her study of experiences of gender amongst Arab American Women. In Lebanon, she founded Lezem, an organization which offered events and initiatives to help Lebanse youth collectively identify community issues and address them through creative projects. Selma’s approach as a mental health professional is to initiate change on an individual and collective level. She firmly believes that healing, growth, and liberation begin as spaces that foster open communication and encourage in-depth understanding.
She will always be happy to talk about music, cultural customs traditions & rituals, psychology, random fun facts and trash TV (guilty pleasure lol)
Trinh Nguyen (she/her), Director of Security & Technology
Trinh has been with the project since its inception, playing a critical advisor to its formation as well as to the community strategy implemented during the early days when we began to tackle diversity and equity in the space. In our eyes, she is one of the best security experts in our space because of her holistic and humane approach when working with frontline communities. In her role, Trinh ensures all our systems, events, and community spaces are safe and secure, while providing consultation and support to a variety of groups needing holistic security guidance. Trinh is developing our Digital Rights Concierge desk, providing the community with an easier way to request diverse types of support from the TC team.
Trinh is holistic security and movement builder trainer, and has over 15 years of training experience, previously working on campaigns for reproductive justice, anti-oppression, Internet Freedom and pro-democracy efforts in Vietnam with Viet Tan. As a movement builder trainer, she incorporates capacity building and cybersecurity tactics to help diverse grassroot groups achieve digital resiliency. She also serves as an advisor for the Ford Foundation’s Cybersecurity Assessment Tool, which she helped co-develop.
She’ll always be happy to talk about backcountry hiking, ancient recipes, Hollywood gossip, and Sailor Moon.
Victoria Sanchis (she/her), Senior Program Assistant
Victoria Sanchis is one of our longest-serving team members. Many folks remember her exceptional care to community members during our in-person events. In many ways, she has grown up with the digital rights community, considering this was one her first jobs out of college. In her role, Victoria supports the team in various capacities, from helping with the newsletter, to helping find amazing content for our social media, to ensuring our job board is up-to-date. She has also played an important role supporting our Regional Leads in the last year with their monthly meetups, and making sure community members feel supported with their various requests.
Victoria has a degree in Audiovisual Communication, and is also our resident rocker, performing with many bands where she plays the guitar and sings. In the past, she played a pivotal role organizing different events for young people related to technology, and gender and inclusivity. She has also helped organize various Open Technology Fund Summits, and has supported diverse diversity and inclusion projects. Victoria is also an incredibly skilled artist, who loves to paint with watercolors, dance and create videos.
She’ll always be happy to talk about cinema, tattoos, vegan food, aerial circus, and feminist art markets.