Sam Gregory Email & Phone Number

Brooklyn, Ny, Us

Lead strategic plan to “Fortify the Truth,” and champion 60-person global team who support millions of people using video and technology for human rights and civic journalism. In 2024, WITNESS won the inaugural Peabody Award for Global Impact, recognizing “media or organizations that have profoundly changed the world for the better” and its work “tirelessly championing the power of emergent media technologies in defense of human rights around the world.”

Brooklyn, Ny, Us

Brooklyn, Ny, Us

Leading global organization incorporating video and related technology into human rights advocacy with mission to help anyone, anywhere using video and technology to fight for human rights. Recognized 5 years in row by Fast Company/Monitor Group as leading social entrepreneurial org, winner of first-ever Humanitarian Emmy. Selected advocacy successes/human rights video innovations supported include:2006: Increases in humanitarian funding for internally displaced people in Burma2010: Landmark legal decision in favor of indigenous rights in Kenya 2012: Secured introduction of video blurring functionality on YouTube platform2012: Launched dedicated Human Rights Channel on YouTube in partnership with Storyful2012: With colleagues identified need for 'video as evidence' program oriented towards ensuring effectiveness of growth of citizen content2013: Among first orgs to introduce app-based image verification tools2018: Lead first expert convening on deepfakes and other AI-based synthetic media• Oversight on program planning, budgeting, implementation• Directly manage work on emerging threats and opportunities at the intersection of AI with misinformation, authoritarianism and authoritarian populism; current focus on deepfakes• Supervise Tech Advocacy advocating to companies around content moderation, privacy and security; as well as policy work on Right to Record• Conceptualize tools: ObscuraCam, one of Wired UK’s top 25 ideas for 2012, featured in the Economist; and ProofMode, focused on authenticating citizen witnessing, winner of Knight News Challenge 2013 (as InformaCam)• Until 2011, supervised 12-15 advocacy campaigns developed in collaboration with local human rights groups (select successes above)• Developed ‘seeding video advocacy’ training strategy, 2003-8 including sector-leading book, intensive Video Advocacy Institute curriculum model, short animated training videos• Until 2007, coordinated work Asia, 2000-2003 also coordinated Latin America

New York, Ny, Us

Project: Human right witnesses in a world of deepfakes and AI-based creativity: An analysis and action plan focused on the people who directly shape our understanding of human rights crises and their relationship to emerging technologies of AI-synthesis and media manipulation

Co-Chair of new Working/Expert Group of the multi-stakeholder Partnership for AI. The Working Groups is focused on social and societal influences of AI, currently scoped to focus on AI, news, media, and other institutions in public discourse. Among current project areas: dual-use of synthetic media research, newsrooms preparedness for AI/ML-driven misinformation and content moderation.

London, Gb

London, Gb

‘Mobil-Eyes Us’ uses the power of live video to connect you to the causes you care about, and provides meaningful ways that you can act by doing what you do best.Mobil-Eyes Us is a project currently being incubated at WITNESS that aims to combine 3 disruptive technologies and the power of distributed, decentralized networks in the service of better social good engagement and activism: live video streaming (think Periscope, Meerkat, Bambuser ), task-routing for under-utilized capacity within distributed networks of people (think Uber, other tools of ‘sharing economy’) and opportunity match-making on your phone (think Tinder).We know that millions of people globally take actions for issues they care about – but frequently their only option is a click to donate or sign a petition. Often they don’t feel connected to the issues or the actions -and usually the available actions are also not a good use of their skills, leverage or capacity. What if we could create a ‘witnessing’ corps of people ready to tune in live? What if, using live video, we could bring supporters into a human rights or other social justice situation at the right time to fully experience the reality? And then ask them to use their unique skills, leverage, or networks to take action – for example to deter illegal violence by their group presence, to rapidly share video material or invite others to act as well, or to provide direct legal guidance? Through an effective integration of technologies with storytelling and movement-building, we are building out prototypes to help people feel more experientially connected to causes they care about and then take actions that matter.*'Mobil-Eyes Us: Using Live Video and the Power of Networks for Smart Activism': https://blog.witness.org/2015/10/mobil-eyes-us-using-live-video-and-the-power-of-networks-for-smart-activism/*'See, Hear... Act?: Co-Present Storytelling and Action' https://blog.witness.org/2015/10/see-hear-act-co-present-storytelling-and-action/

Cologny, Geneva, Ch

Cambridge, Ma, Us

Teach 'Human Rights Advocacy Using Video, Social Media, and Participatory Media' and Faculty Affiliate of Carr Center for Human Rights Policy. Syllabus available at: http://www.hks.harvard.edu/degrees/teaching-courses/course-listing/iga-380m. Course consistently receives extremely high evaluation grades: e.g. 2013, (average overall evaluation score: 4.9 out of 5, 2012 (average overall evaluation score, 4.38 out of 5), 2011 (avg overall score, 4.78/5) and 2010 (avg overall score, 4.5/5)

Alongside ongoing position at WITNESS, part of inaugural 'Future for Good' Fellowship project at the Institute for the Future - a think-tank in Palo Alto. I’m looking at the future over the the next five-ten years of ‘co-presence for good’ and the power of experiential, real-time witnessing, learning, and engagement for human rights activism. I'm exploring some forecasting work plus real-life experiments, and also looking at what some provocative prototyping of what this might look like in the human rights context, perhaps via Google Glass or hangouts. Keen to hear from others interested in this area...

Vienna, Wien, At

2 day presentations on video, technology and freedom of expression in CEU Summer School

New York, Ny, Us

Project: Storytelling for action to engage contemporary audiences for human rights change.

Cambridge, Ma, Us

• Designed and taught an innovative immersive January session course for Masters students in policy school

Berlin, De

Phd By Publication, Media And Communication Studies

Executive Education, Global Leadership And Public Policy For The 21St Century

Executive Education Course, Politics, Policy And Paradigms In Asia

Mpp, Public Policy

Ba (First Class), Modern History And Spanish

Executive Education, Foundations For Leadership In The 21St Century: Strategic Impact