Theodora Skeadas

As DoorDash's Community Policy Manager, I build our trust and safety policies to make DoorDash the safest and most trusted marketplace out there.

Advise the development of hands-on, measurable methods of real-time assessments of societal impact of AI models, by: ► Curating a protocol library of best practices developed and contributed by other organizations and individuals. These libraries can be forked to use in your own model evaluations. ► Providing API access for model evaluators to showcase their assessments and audits. ► Creating hosted environments for evaluation code and papers. ► Hosting periodic competitions (algorithmic bias bounties) to both educate and showcase talent in algorithmic auditing and evaluation. ► Delivering an educational pathway where learners are able to apply what they’ve learned on real models using proven evaluation tools.

Advise organizations on a range of trust and safety themes, including fraud, election integrity, geopolitics, AI, and tech-facilitated gender-based violence

The Emergence Circle Fellowship focused on exploring transformative solutions at the intersection of AI and Indigenous sovereignty. Over the course of the fall, 12 Emergence Fellows applied seven-generations thinking to AI and built solutions to address the long-term impacts of AI in Indigenous communities that otherwise wouldn't exist. Fellows created a Tribal AI Governance Resource Hub (to be released soon), developed methods for adversarial stress testing of AI systems in Indigenous contexts, and launched initiatives using AI for cultural memory preservation and language revitalization. We also built a community of practitioners thinking carefully about AI's impact on our children. For my AI stress testing workshop, participants evaluated the CARE and OCAP Indigenous Data Sovereignty Frameworks. Tribal Nations already have principles that guide how knowledge, relationships, and responsibilities are governed. The CARE Principles (Collective Benefit, Authority to Control, Responsibility, and Ethics) and the OCAP Principles (Ownership, Control, Access, and Possession) for Indigenous Data Governance center Indigenous rights and sovereignty in data work, providing a foundation for evaluating whether an AI system aligns with Indigenous governance and collective well-being. Together, CARE and OCAP assert that data about Indigenous peoples must be governed by Indigenous peoples, under Tribal law and authority. These principles establish the expectation that any AI systems must be accountable to Tribal governance. The Indigenized Adversarial Stress Testing Framework operationalizes this by translating CARE and OCAP into concrete questions, prompts, and criteria that support Tribal leaders in determining whether a technology aligns with Tribal sovereignty, cultural values, and the Nation’s responsibilities to its citizens and lands. Read more here: https://joinemergence.org/

I co-chaired this year's Women 7 (W7) working group on emerging technology and AI. The W7 is an official G7 engagement group focused on gender justice and women’s rights. The W7 brings together feminist activists from across Canada, G7 nations, and the Global South to ensure that gender justice remains a central priority throughout all meetings and theme discussions.

Authored a report on child safety and privacy in end-to-end encrypted (E2EE) environments.

Supported a chat-based safety initiative that delivers journalist safety information.

Developed a mapping of all Christchurch Call Advisory Network members.

Cambridge Local First is a non-profit network of locally owned and independent businesses formed in October 2005 to build a strong local economy and a vibrant community. The mission of CLF is to support, promote, and celebrate a “Local Economy Community” by educating the public and government about the significant environmental, economic, and cultural benefits of a strong local economy. ► Oversaw all programming and administration-related work of the organization. ► Managed the national Resilient Local Economies internship, with the Sustainable Business Network of MA and the American Independent Business Alliance. ► Built the Cambridge-Somerville Black Business Network.

Advised the organization’s AI philanthropic coordination efforts.

In this research endeavor, I aim to explore the relationship between newer technologies like social media and artificial intelligence and online and offline harms. How do existing frameworks around offline harms (like just war theory), particularly in the context of war, translate to the online context? How do we evaluate the moral significance of online acts of violence against noncombatants? What is the threshold for terrorism online? Are there meaningful differences between online and offline terrorism? How does AI serve as a complicating factor? I aim to broaden our understanding of the ethics of digital technologies and the question of online vs. offline harm, leveraging just war theory from a decolonial perspective as an analytical framework, so that we can build better online safeguards. My supervisors are Dr. Jack McDonald & Joe Devanny.

The Master in Public Policy (MPP) degree is a two-year program that prepares students both to understand complex problems and to craft concrete solutions. Through courses, exercises, and fieldwork, students master an interdisciplinary conceptual toolkit that draws on the social sciences but is adapted for action. The MPP Core curriculum features policy analysis, economics, management and leadership, empirical analysis, negotiation, ethics, and politics. Master thesis, “Arctic 2030: Planning for an Uncertain Future” for German Foreign Ministry, published as Harvard Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government Associate Working Paper 57.

Competed a summer-long intermediate level Modern Arabic course