I have worked in strategy, digital, and implementation roles with activists, nonprofits, educators, and researchers since 2006.
From October 2020 to May 2022 I worked as the first full-time software engineer on staff at Organise, a London-based social enterprise supporting worker rights campaigns.
From July 2015 to September 2020 I worked at IG Metall, the trade union in the German manufacturing sector. At IG Metall I did worker organizing, public communication, research coordination, and policy advocacy around the rights of workers on digital labor platforms. Among other projects, in this role I was involved in the development of ‘Fair Crowd Work,’ the first independent rating system for working conditions on digital labour platforms; funding and planning of research into the global labour force producing training data for autonomous cars; and ‘FairTube,’ a campaign to improve fairness and transparency for YouTube creators around algorithmic ‘demonetization’ and account suspension decisions. I designed and built the first FairTube website and devised the legal strategy — based on possible violations of the EU General Data Protection Regulation — used to encourage the platform to improve fairness and accountability. This strategy was later the subject of a Master’s thesis completed at the Tallinn University of Technology.
At IG Metall I was also a co-author of the first report of the UN International Labour Organization on platform work, Digital Labour Platforms and the Future of Work: Towards Decent Work in the Online World (2018), which received press coverage in six languages. I also contributed to the development of the EU Platform Work Directive, adopted in 2024. (In particular, I was one of the external reviewers of the 2019 European Commission Study to gather evidence on the working conditions of platform workers, which formed part of the evidence base for the Directive Proposal.)
In 2008 I cofounded Turkopticon, an independent client reputation system used by workers on Amazon Mechanical Turk, with Lilly Irani. I was lead programmer and system administrator of Turkopticon from 2008 to 2020. Turkopticon has been the subject of peer-reviewed research—by us and others—in multiple languages and has been covered in industry and general interest press. In 2020 Turkopticon became worker-led. Its worker-managers continue to be involved in building worker power and advocating for improved conditions in online platform work.
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If you think you might like to work with me, get in touch.