John Penn II

It didn't start with a strategy. It started with exposure.
When we first encountered the ways our technology was being used to harm children, we didn't have a plan. We had a problem we hadn't anticipated and a growing sense that we couldn't solve it alone. So we started talking to people who understood it better than we did.

The first conversations were with non-profits working in child protection. They had seen things we hadn't. They understood the harm at a human level - not as a policy problem or a product flaw, but as something happening to real kids. Those conversations were hard to sit in. They were also the most important ones we had.
Over time, those relationships deepened. Non-profits introduced us to law enforcement. Investigators shared what they were seeing in cases - the tactics used, the patterns that emerged, the places where technology was failing them. We shared back. We talked about where our tools fell short, where our assumptions were wrong, where well-intentioned design had created gaps someone else was exploiting.

That kind of honesty doesn't come easy in a corporate context. Admitting where your product fails feels like risk. But we learned that transparency was the only thing that made the partnership real. Law enforcement didn't need us to be perfect. They needed us to be honest and willing to keep working.

What grew out of those conversations wasn't a formal program. It was trust - built slowly, through follow-through and candor on both sides.

This session is about that process. How you find the right people. How you stay in the relationship when it gets uncomfortable. And why the partnerships that form that way tend to be the ones that actually last.