The BHR Group Digital Rights Careers Newsletter | Issue 30

Jun 04, 2025

Dear Colleagues:

In this issue, we speak with David Sullivan, Executive Director of the Digital Trust and Safety Partnership, whose career trajectory illustrates how policy practitioners in digital rights can build expertise across institutional boundaries. David's entry into this field came through humanitarian work in post-war Liberia, where he observed that the local telecom monopoly was controlled by the same forces responsible for the conflict itself – creating a situation where aid workers' regular and ongoing communications directly funded those who had caused the crisis they were working to address. He notes that this experience revealed to him the political economy of technology infrastructure in ways that would inform his subsequent policy work in the field of digital rights.

David has since worked across advocacy, multi-stakeholder collaboration, and industry standard-setting. At the Enough Project, he researched how conflict minerals in electronics supply chains connected consumer technology to violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo. During his time at the Global Network Initiative (which convenes tech companies, civil society, and investors around freedom of expression and privacy), one of the many roles he played was to help facilitate multi-stakeholder discussions on internet shutdowns - work that, in partnership with digital rights organizations and other stakeholders, contributed to elevating this issue from a local and regional concern to a global policy priority recognized by international organizations and the public more broadly.

In the Q&A, David offers some thoughts on why effective writing remains essential for policy work even in the AI era, argues that unpaid internships shouldn’t fly, and explains how cross-sector experience helps practitioners understand different institutional incentives. You’ll also see that he shouts-out an earlier guest practitioner from an earlier newsletter issue, Dunstan Allison-Hope. David’s responses offer helpful perspectives on how policy change can occur through sustained collaboration and how a diverse set of institutional experiences can inform effective leadership in digital rights.

Thank you, David, for your insights, advocacy, and leadership!

Sincerely,

Michael Samway
The Business and Human Rights Group
Website: www.thebhrgroup.com

Guest Spotlight

🎙️What are some of the most formative period or events in your life, personal or professional, that shaped your work in technology and human rights?

💬 After a brief and entirely unsuccessful foray with a tech startup, I started my career in humanitarian aid, working for the International Rescue Committee. I spent a year in postwar Liberia before heading to graduate school, at a time when mobile phones were revolutionizing global connectivity. When I got to Liberia there was just one provider, Lonestar, a monopoly that was controlled by Charles Taylor, the warlord former President who was at the time a fugitive from justice wanted for war crimes. It shocked me that every phone call or text message sent by aid workers and UN staff was lining the pockets of the man most responsible for the war that had ravaged the region. It was a first lesson on how technology and human rights are inherently intertwined.
I went to graduate school for international relations, with a focus on conflict management, because after working on treating the symptoms of violent conflict, I wanted to pursue a career focused on trying to address its causes. That brought me to human rights and atrocity prevention advocacy. At the Enough Project at the Center for American Progress, I dove into research and advocacy to stop mass atrocities in places like the Democratic Republic of Congo. Analyzing the role of the minerals trade in fueling the conflict, used in high tech supply chains for phones and other gadgets, brought me back to the world of technology. Pushing companies to take responsibility for their supply chains, and advocating for legal transparency requirements, showed me the leverage that tech companies possess to make change, and the harm that can happen when they do not use it.
Seeing the positive potential for technology companies taking responsibility for human rights impacts led me to the Global Network Initiative, where I had the chance to facilitate multistakeholder collaboration among companies and human rights organizations on freedom of expression and privacy. In turn, my time at GNI led me to appreciate the importance of industry partnerships, which brought me to my current role at the Digital Trust and Safety Partnership, where we’re establishing best practices and standards for online trust and safety.

🎙️How do you continue doing what you do, pushing and advocating for digital rights, and human rights more broadly? How do you deal in a sustainable way for yourself with the frustrations or set-backs in this work and also acknowledge and build-on the progress?

💬 As a generalist, I’ve been fortunate to move between fields over my career, moving in the overall direction of trying to advance human rights. Having the chance to dive into new realms, moving from humanitarian relief, to democracy and governance, to atrocity prevention, digital rights, and now trust and safety, keeps me enthusiastic and curious. I do my best to learn from the specialists who dedicate their careers and become experts in each of these domains, but generalists and specialists each have their own role to play, even in fields like digital rights and trust and safety, where technical expertise is often privileged.

🎙️Who are some people or an individual you’ve met during your work in this field who have/has had a profound influence on your work? And in what way?

💬 I first met Dunstan Allison-Hope eons ago, when I was working on advocacy around electronics supply chains and conflict in Congo. We’ve worked together many times over the years, first while I was at GNI and later in my current role, and no one does a better job navigating the often-fraught boundaries between companies and other stakeholders in the world of business and human rights.
Working with the GNI Board of Directors has also been a pleasure and a privilege. Beginning with its founding members and then growing to include truly global leaders from across companies and civil society the GNI Board includes some of the best and brightest in the field of digital rights. Watching how these leaders from companies, civil society, investors, and academia, diverse and often diverging interests, would come together collectively on challenging issues like censorship and surveillance helped me to understand the importance of diplomacy, constructive conflict, and the value of hard-fought consensus.

🎙️What’s a specific event when you feel like your team’s or organization’s work (or your own work) was able to make a significant impact in the field of digital rights?

💬 At GNI, one of the key issues we focused on was Internet shutdowns. Egypt shutting down the Internet at the height of the Arab Spring shocked the world, but in the following years, these restrictions became a frequent occurrence.
At GNI, we were able to get internet and telecom companies to the table to talk about this very sensitive topic, bringing them into conversation with digital rights organizations from countries where these shutdowns are all too routine, and identifying ways to minimize their impact. We really brough each of GNI’s pillars to this work: using the GNI principles to inform company action, insights from third-party assessments, shared learning among members, and multistakeholder policy advocacy.
Although the problem is far from solved, I think we did help galvanize a response that put shutdowns on the policy agenda, with subsequent action from the United Nations, the Freedom Online Coalition, and of course continued digital rights advocacy.

🎙️What are some ways you think the technology, policy, and human rights field can become more multi-stakeholder, inclusive, and accessible?

💬 Pay your interns. It’s confounding that this is something that still needs to be said in 2025.

🎙️For undergraduate or graduate students reading this, what type course (e.g., computer science, human rights, languages, history, art) or activities (e.g., internships, summer jobs) do you think might be most helpful as they contemplate careers in technology, public policy, and human rights?

💬 There is no substitute for clear and compelling writing. As a graduate student, I had a fairly unique opportunity to take a “writing for policy” class, where we were taught by some of the best in the business about how to write op-eds, policy memos, and think-tank reports. I vividly recall a guest lecturer describing how writing is about getting the reader to want to keep reading, from sentence to sentence. Good writing leads to clear thinking, and I’d argue it’s even more important now in the age of AI. So I’d recommend coursework that emphasizes learning how to write effectively.

🎙️What are some of the sources you turn to when building knowledge or keeping informed on tech, policy, law, and human rights related issues?

The BHR Group Digital Rights Careers Newsletter

The BHR Group Digital Rights Careers Newsletter | Issue 30

Guest Spotlight

Positions in Policy, Law, and Digital Rights

Civil Society/Non-Profits

Press/Media

Boards

Academia

International Organizations

Think Tanks/Research Institutions

Multi-Stakeholder Organizations/Initiatives

Government

Industry

Industry Associations

Firms/Consultancies