Karissa McKelvey is a public interest technologist and researcher working in solidarity with marginalised communities to defend their rights. Her work has been depended upon by at-risk users including environmental and human rights defenders, journalists and civil society activists living within repressive environments. She combines her backgrounds in political science, complex systems research and software engineering to deliver public interest initiatives that leverage emerging technologies. Karissa’s perspectives and works have been featured in high-profile news outlets such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and NPR. Since 2014, she has focused on developing distributed technology to re-engineer the Internet and build applications that prioritise security and access. She is a Technologist at Digital Democracy and a Research Fellow at Simply Secure.