Judy Taing
Founder, Processing Power
Judy Taing has spent fifteen years helping people stay safe and resilient in the face of technological change. She has worked with major technology companies, governments, journalists, and activists around the world to push for tech accountability, better laws and policy, and to increase individual and organizational agency within the quickly evolving tech ecosystem. She led digital safety trainings for human rights defenders in some of the most restrictive environments, and built programs and tech tools that helped journalists facing online harassment and abuse. She has worked with schools and parents in Indonesia and the US on using technology to build open, trusting school communities.
In all her work, and as a parent of young children in Los Angeles, Judy has come to see that schools and education systems have been left to navigate the rapid pace of technological development on their own. They are often integrating technology and AI tools into curriculum and teaching without adequate preparation for online harms, or for the impact technology can have on children’s ability to learn and to value their own thinking. Schools now need to act quickly to safeguard the integrity of education and to inspire children to become critical thinkers. Many are responding, but no model has yet been scaled, which presents an opportunity to lead the way.
In response, Judy has built Processing Power, a holistic program of work that helps schools take charge of their own technology trajectories and exercise greater intentionality and agency in deciding how tech is used on campus. The program supports schools in crafting technology policies and practices that reflect the tech culture of their own community. It also prepares students with sophisticated critical thinking, along with the ingenuity and “street smarts” to use the internet, AI, and other technology safely.
From her years working with the United Nations and in international digital rights, Judy brings a deep understanding of the technology landscape, along with safety and resilience tactics, into schools and classrooms. Over the past two years, she has worked with LAUSD schools to survey and articulate each school community’s tech culture, audit existing technology tools, analyze policy, and produce baseline reports that establish a starting point for this work. She also teaches digital resilience courses that give students foundational skills for understanding key attributes of the internet, such as anonymity, verification of facts, and virality.