Selected Campaign Contributions & Achievements
During my time as a researcher at the nation’s largest online racial justice organization, I contributed research and strategy to several campaigns that ended in concessions from corporate and political decision-makers. My deliverables were largely developed for an internal audience to inform our strategy and build power as effectively as possible. Below is some of the public-facing documentation for a few campaign victories that featured a significant research component.
Racial justice research work (2018-2022)
Body Mass Index (BMI)
2022
I led our research team’s agenda on outdated medical metrics and their impacts on Black patients; as a result, my colleagues and I successfully pushed two high-profile health and wellness magazines to commit to ending their uncritical citation of Body Mass Index (BMI) as an assessment of health.
Press release: Good Housekeeping and Prevention to Remove Body Mass Index as a Metric for Health in Reporting Across All Platforms
Good Housekeeping article: Is the BMI Accurate? Experts Explain Why It's a Misleading Predictor of Health
Prevention article: Why the Body Mass Index Is So Often Misleading, According to Doctors
Educational videos with expert testimonials: How BMI Perpetuates Racism & Hurts Marginalized People, Sabrina Strings Explains How ‘Fatphobia’ is Rooted in Racism, How BMI Is Rooted in Racism
Plantation Weddings
2019
Using my research, my team successfully pushed several prominent wedding planning websites to stop romanticizing and listing former slave plantations. I looked into the history of each of the venues and their links to slavery, as well as archiving examples of particularly egregious language on the sites.
New York Times coverage: Pinterest and The Knot Pledge to Stop Promoting Plantation Weddings
Buzzfeed News coverage: Pinterest and The Knot Will Stop Promoting Wedding Content That Romanticizes Former Slave Plantations
Airbnb Civil Rights Audit
2020
After Airbnb agreed to undergo a civil rights audit following complaints of anti-Black racism on the platform, we worked as an accountability partner to inform the company’s anti-discrimination work, including but not limited to providing feedback on the studies they performed to assess interactions on the platform for bias and/or analyze the impact at scale. Along with my team members, I provided input on one such study, Project Lighthouse.
Announcement of Project Lighthouse: A new way we’re fighting discrimination on Airbnb
White paper with overview of the privacy model: Project Lighthouse – Part 1: P-sensitive k-anonymity
Facebook Civil Rights Audit
2018
After consistently pressuring Facebook to agree to a civil rights audit, our team engaged with stakeholders across the company to push for improved policies related to topics such as hate speech, predatory advertising, breaking news, electoral disinformation, targeting of Black activists, and treatment of Black workers. As part of a long-term research project to understand the issues on the platform and internal to the company, I investigated Facebook leadership and supported our conversations with employees.
Press release: Audit Culminates Six Months of Heightened Commitment from Facebook to Address Harms on the Platform
“Everything worthwhile is done with other people.”