For the past five years, Snap's Safety Advisory Board (SAB) has helped us meaningfully evolve how we support the safety and well-being of the Snapchat community.

Today, we're announcing the next chapter of that work: a newly constituted SAB that brings together 20 members from nine countries. Members bring expertise in child safety, mental health, public safety, and technology and product safety, alongside lived experience, academic and research excellence, law enforcement, civil society and the perspective of the Snapchat generation.

This is a moment of both continuity and change. We are grateful to the members who served on the previous Board, and especially pleased that seven are continuing into this next term. We are also welcoming 13 new members, including five young people, three of whom are alumni of Snap's teen Councils for Digital Well-Being program. Over a three-year term, this group will help us test our assumptions, identify issues we may be missing, and bring independent perspectives to the decisions that affect our community.

The SAB was created to provide candid, independent advice. Over the last five years, under the stewardship of Jacqueline Beauchere, our Global Head of Platform Safety, our conversations have covered Snapchat’s Family Center, My AI, age assurance, digital well-being, public sharing for older teens, robust reporting, and how we enforce our policies.

The SAB's advice has helped sharpen and inform our work in practical ways. For example, feedback from SAB members contributed to our functionality choices for Family Center and related improvements. SAB members also reviewed and provided feedback on The Keys, Snap’s interactive online safety learning course launched in 2025, as well as internal policy refinements, ecosystem-wide research, and our public policy priorities. 

The value of an advisory relationship is not measured by how often we agree. It is measured by whether the conversation makes our work more thoughtful, more rigorous and more responsive to the community of almost a billion people we serve.

The technology landscape is shifting fast, and the next five years will bring difficult questions:

• Artificial intelligence is changing how people create, communicate, and seek support online.

• Young people's experiences online, and their feelings of safety and well-being, vary across cultures, languages, and communities.

• Risks of harm can move quickly across services and borders.

• Laws and expectations continue to evolve, sometimes in conflict with one another.

The right response is rarely simple. It may require further evolving our product design or our policies or coordinating with new or existing partners on a solution. It will certainly require constant adaptation and learning, the education of both our community and ourselves, and strong partnerships built on the trust and transparency that difficult conversations demand.

The new SAB is designed for that complexity. The newly composed board brings professional expertise alongside lived experience and youth perspective. They represent different regions and disciplines, including specialists in child sexual exploitation and abuse, bullying and harassment, hate and extremism, mental health and self-harm prevention, illicit drugs and fentanyl, law enforcement and school safety, digital citizenship, children's rights, AI, and safety by design. 

Ed Ternan, Founder and President of Song for Charlie and a returning board member, said, “It is my privilege to serve on Snap’s Safety Advisory Board alongside experts from across the globe. My participation as a family member highlights Snap’s openness to considering all perspectives in its commitment to keep its community safe.”

That breadth matters because there is no single perspective or experience when it comes to  online safety and creating space for new voices to enter is critical. As Chaimae Bentaleb, a new board member, student and and EMC Youth Coordinator at Espace Maroc Cyberconfiance Youth shared: “Joining Snap’s Safety Advisory Board reminded me of something simple: you’re never ‘too young’ to take responsibility, you just need people who trust you enough to let you try.”

• Alex Holmes, OBE (UK) — The Diana Award; BBC Children in Need

• Anshul Tewari (India) — Founder and CEO, Youth Ki Awaaz

• Chaimae Bentaleb (Morocco) — Cybersecurity Engineering Student; EMC Youth Coordinator, Espace Maroc Cyberconfiance Youth

• Conner Mather (US) — Content Creator and Founder, Attention Literacy

• Dr. Daniel Jay Reidenberg (US) — Founder, S.O.S.; Director, Thrive; Core Faculty, Johns Hopkins Center for Suicide Prevention; Managing Director, National Council for Suicide Prevention; Co-Chair, Media and Internet, International Association for Suicide Prevention

• Dr. Desmond Upton Patton (US) — PIK University Professor, University of Pennsylvania

• Dinu Antonescu (US) — Student, University of Toronto; Member, Snap inaugural U.S. Council for Digital Well-Being

• Ed Ternan (US) — Founder and President, Song for Charlie

• Hera Hussain (Pakistan, UK) — Founder and CEO, Chayn

• Isabella "Bella" Friesen (Germany) — Student; Member, Snap inaugural European Council for Digital Well-Being

• Dr. Jessica Piotrowski (US, Netherlands) — Professor, University of Amsterdam

• Jutta Croll (Germany) — Chairwoman of the Board of Directors, Stiftung Digitale Chancen (Digital Opportunities Foundation)

• Lucy Thomas (Australia) — CEO, PROJECT ROCKIT

• Meeri Haataja (Finland) — CEO and Founder, Saidot

• Dr. Michael Rich (US) — Founder and Director, Digital Wellness Lab, and Founder and Director, Clinic for Interactive Media and Internet Disorders, Boston Children's Hospital; Harvard Medical School

• Mona Cho (US) — CEO and Executive Director, DOSE Initiative; Student; Member, Snap inaugural U.S. Council for Digital Well-Being

• Det. Richard Wistocki (US) — Cyber Crimes Detective (Retired), Naperville, IL Police Department (ICAC); Jefferson County, IL Sheriff; Besure Consulting

• Sarah Blight (UK) — Director of Vulnerabilities, PA Consulting; formerly UK National Crime Agency and Ofcom

• Theresa Campbell (Canada) — Founder and CEO, Safer Schools Together

• Toby Dagg (Australia) — Principal Consultant, Primary Purpose Advisory Pty Ltd; former General Manager, Regulatory Operations, Office of the Australian eSafety Commissioner

The SAB is one part of a broader safety ecosystem at Snap. As the Board enters this next chapter, the remit of Snap's Platform Safety team, which oversees the work of the SAB, has expanded alongside it. The team now brings together members with safety, operations, policy, legal, and prior law enforcement experience, under the leadership of Jacqueline Beauchere. And with that expansion comes a realignment of roles and responsibilities. I am honored to assume primary responsibility for shepherding this newly reconstituted SAB. Together, our expanded team is well placed to help foster the SAB's work and to ensure a robust feedback loop to the rest of the company.

We are grateful to every expert, advocate, young person, and partner who has shared their time and perspective with us over the past several years. We look forward to learning from this new Board and to continuing the work of making Snapchat a place where people can connect, create and communicate with greater safety and confidence, because how you feel online matters.

— Rachel Hochhauser, Director, Safety Outreach, Snap Inc.