After a meaningful year as Director of the Applied Social Media Lab at Harvard's Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, I have made the difficult decision to step away from a leadership role, in order to get back to my goal of finding new ways to help organizations succeed. I still believe deeply in the Lab’s important work, and so will continue to support its mission and participate in the BKC community as an Advisory Fellow.

I’m pleased that the work of building the Lab is largely complete. A team of fifteen technologists from industry, non-profits, and academia have joined the Lab full-time. We began to assemble a community of practice through workshops, events, and a fellowship program. Together, we set an ambitious strategy to move the long-term future of social media toward the public interest. Some of the Lab’s projects are already public, like the Fediverse Schema Observatory and the Frankly platform for online deliberations. Others are getting close, and I can’t wait for you to learn about them. 

Becoming a BKC Advisory Fellow fulfills my 2023 resolution to stop trying to be a great leader, and start learning how to be a great helper. Supporting the next generation of leaders at BKC feels more meaningful right now than continuing to wield my own positional authority. This also gives me more time to help other teams and leaders, both in my local community and across the technology industry.

In particular, this experience helped me recognize that I am happiest when my work has a clear goal and end point. This is what drew me to theater in high school and college. After the frenzy of rehearsal and preparation, when the curtain goes down on the last performance, you celebrate, strike the sets, and are free to rest up and start planning your next production. Finishing the ASML’s launch year feels like that to me, meaning it’s time to look for what’s next.

So, that’s where I’m at now. The show goes on at ASML, but I’ll be helping out from just offstage in the wings. I’ve already started talking to some folks about helping to get their new ideas off the ground. And if you’ve got an interesting problem or project where you think I could be useful, drop me a line!