Fairness without surveillance.

I design the rules that let companies find discrimination in their technology without spying on the people they’re trying to protect. I did it at Airbnb and Meta.

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Hi, I am

JULIE WENAH Julie Wenah

In short

Julie Wenah

Civil rights lawyer and technologist. I work on how AI and biometric systems get measured, governed, and held accountable.

Government work at NASA, the Obama White House, the U.S. Department of Commerce, and the FCC’s Communications Equity and Diversity Council.
At Airbnb and Meta, I designed the governance for systems that measure racial bias without exposing the people being measured.
Chair of the Digital Civil Rights Coalition and founder of a company that helps product teams catch discrimination risk before launch.
I’ve briefed the White House and the Congressional Black Caucus, and spoken from Davos to Accra to Tokyo.

Book Julie See the work

Or write to her

Technology decides things about people every day: who gets hired, housed, approved, or flagged. My work is making sure those decisions can be checked, and that checking them doesn’t cost anyone their privacy.

New here

Hi, I’m Julie.

I’m a lawyer who ended up building technology. The problem I keep working on: you can’t fix discrimination you can’t measure, and you can’t measure people in ways that put them at risk.

Read the full bio →

The story

How I got here

Where the work has lived

Organizations

NASA, the White House, Commerce, the FCC, Airbnb, Meta, and the Partnership on AI. Government and tech, often at the same time.

See the work →

The work

What I do.

Most of my projects need all three: technology, law, and product.

What that belief looks like in the real world

Three places the work actually lands.

Technology

Measuring bias without surveillance

AI/ML and Biometric Governance Practitioner

At Airbnb and Meta, I designed the governance for measuring racial disparities with privacy-protecting methods: k-anonymity, differential privacy, and secure multiparty computation.

Meta · Race Data Measurement · Project Height · Airbnb Project Lighthouse Explore →

Law

Rules that hold up

Digital Civil Rights Lawyer

I’ve worked on technology policy inside government, and today I advise on AI, biometric, and children’s privacy law.

FCC CEDC · Obama Administration · Regulatory frameworks Explore →

Product

Building, and telling the story

Technology Executive

Product lead at Meta, a startup founder, and a filmmaker. I also run The Album & The Mixtape, where I break down music and what it says about the world we’re building.

Digital Civil Rights Coalition · Filmmaking · Davos panels Explore →

On film

On film.

I make documentaries, including Home and Rain to Reign, and short videos on how technology makes decisions about you. Most of the people affected by these systems will never read a policy memo, so I make work they will watch.

Let’s talk

Work with me.

I speak, advise, and partner with organizations that build, buy, or regulate AI. Tell me what you’re working on.

Speaking

Keynotes, panels and convenings

Collaboration

Advisory work and coalition building

Partnership

Get in touch

Julie in the room