Important news from Integrity Institute

By Jeff Allen

Hi,

As you may have seen from Sahar’s recent message, we have important news to share with you from the Integrity Institute. Today, a co-founder of the Integrity Institute, Sahar Massachi, is moving on. We’d like to extend him thanks for the important work he did in the founding of the Institute– during which it went from just an idea to the thriving organization it is today– and wish him well in his future endeavors.

Over the past year, as a result of the hard work of our community and everyone on our team, the Integrity Institute has become better positioned than ever to work towards our vision of a social internet that helps people, societies, and democracies flourish. We have a remarkable community of integrity professionals who are helping each other navigate the industry downturn, developing the best practices necessary to elevate the profession, helping to understand and track how platforms are doing during this year of elections, and supporting the efforts of policy makers and civil society organizations around the world. And we have a remarkable staff which is passionate about supporting our community and connecting them to opportunities to have real, meaningful impact on the world.

As Sahar moves on, this will create a moment of transition for the Institute. But we are ready with a transition plan. We have a strong leadership team and, importantly, staff in place that are passionate about our work and well-prepared to grow the impact of the Institute and take it to new heights.

The leadership team will consist of myself, leading our research team as the chief research officer, Rachel Townsend, leading our operations team as managing director, and David Jay, leading our community team as interim community director. In the coming weeks, we will work with the board of the Integrity Institute to establish the right long term leadership model for our organization. And we will continue to ensure that the work of the Institute stays on track and that we rise to the occasion during the many opportunities that lay ahead of us. We will provide updates throughout the transition as we move forward with the support of the board, our funders, staff and current leadership team.

The work of the Institute continues full steam ahead– we will keep supporting policy makers around the world, studying the impact the platforms have on elections, sharing opportunities with our members in Slack, running working groups and events, and sponsoring the many member-led projects that are advancing the industry’s best practices in trust and safety.

I am so grateful for this amazing community and team that has accomplished so much in such a short amount of time, and we are all so grateful for our supporters who have made it possible. If you have any questions about our transition plan, please don’t hesitate to reach out.

Thank you,

Jeff, on behalf of the board of the Integrity Institute