At Moonshot, we are very proud of our company culture and values. We believe that building a diverse team with a range of experiences and expertise helps us better understand online harms and violent extremism and enables us to design and deliver the effective work we do to counter them.
Our Moonshot Team Spotlight Series aims to shine a light on what it’s like to work at Moonshot, the different projects we work on, and our company culture and values from the perspective of our team. The series will feature members of the Moonshot Team with a variety of backgrounds, skills, and experiences — not everyone joins us from the online harms or violent extremism sectors. While the profiles will be anonymous due to the sensitive work we do, we hope that the series will provide a snapshot of the Moonshot Team, our work, and our culture and values.
Moonshot Manager
Moonshot Managers lead on project, client, and team management across our work in online harms and violent extremism. Our managers are experts across multiple areas of harms and geographies, and across our proprietary tech.
Managers are critical to the work we do at Moonshot. They are essential to developing new methodologies and tech solutions and coordinating the design and delivery of our projects, from insights and threat monitoring to interventions and capacity building.
Our Manager this week has worked with Moonshot for nearly four years, progressing from Analyst to Manager. They have worked across projects in Europe, the U.S., South & East Asia, and Oceania to deliver insights and interventions addressing online harms like violent extremism, school shootings, gender-based violence, and disinformation.
What were you doing before joining Moonshot?
I started my career in advertising, working as a Senior Account Executive for an agency in London. I then volunteered in a Research and Communications role for an NGO called Street Child in Uganda. Street Child is a UK charity that aims to create educational opportunities for vulnerable children globally. Working with former child soldiers and conflicted-affected people — and those working tirelessly to advocate for them — had a huge impact on me and what I wanted to do next in my career. Hearing about the destructive impact of violence first-hand made me think — surely something can be done to help people turn away from using violence as means of change? Moonshot felt like the perfect fit for how I could combine my skills to explore that.
What does your current role entail? What is the most interesting part of your role?
I started at Moonshot as an Analyst. Now I’m a Manager who manages two Analysts. In my peer coffee (a part of the Moonshot interview process designed for candidates to chat informally with the team), a former colleague told me that the work at Moonshot is so interesting and exciting, there is almost too much to get involved with. And she was so right! The curse is that you just don’t have time. The best part of my job is being able to work across nearly all of Moonshot’s work, including many different types of harms: from gender based violence, school shootings, and different extremist ideologies. There’s always new and important work you can get involved in — the range of projects we work on is amazing!
Please can you tell us a bit more about a project you’re working on/you’ve worked on/the area you work in?
I led a project on how mass shootings manifest online in California. The research focused on events where multiple people were killed in educational settings using firearms. We researched how the online space can become a feedback loop where vulnerable individuals can cultivate an interest in, obsession with or glorification of different mass shooters and shootings.
What is the toughest/most challenging part of your role?
I think the real difficulty is a temptation to overreach and overcommit, because everything we work on is so interesting. Everyone at Moonshot also really cares about our company development so the team is always looking for ways to improve how we do things. It’s been a challenge to learn when/ how to pull back, especially because of the type of work we do, which is already challenging.
What is the most important thing you have learned since joining Moonshot?
Understanding the value of different perspectives and collaboration. Whether it’s the diverse backgrounds and perspectives of my colleagues or the fascinating research from subject-matter experts we partner with around the world, the importance of collaboration in working to prevent some of the world’s toughest problems has been a crucial learning point for me.
How would you describe the Moonshot culture?
I’ve worked with so many different teams over the years, but it’s always been a pleasure to work with everyone at Moonshot. Everyone is welcoming and respectful. No matter your seniority, everyone has time for you and gives time to others. Everyone’s opinion is treated equally no matter what role you’re working in.
What makes Moonshot different from other places I’ve worked is being able to look around and be inspired by those around you — people here are both consistently interested and interesting. I have also never worked with anyone who doesn’t approach everything we work on with kindness and empathy. This is incredibly important for the work we do — having empathy and understanding of people’s different life experiences. There is also an inherent team willingness to pitch in and get involved or help out on anything, but there’s also no pressure to get involved either — it’s a really good balance.
In your opinion, what is the most significant trend to watch in the online harms space at the moment?
For a long time, the online harms and violent extremism space has been dominated by ideology as a key driver for violence. However, what I think is increasingly clear is that violence or harmful behavior are often expressions of fundamentally emotional issues that have gone unaddressed and unsupported. As a sector, I think we are finally moving to a broader understanding of how and why people get involved in violence, and better ways to help prevent it.
What’s something most people don’t know about you?
I learnt how to ride a motorbike on YouTube and then rode 1000 miles through Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya around Lake Victoria!
Learn more about our company culture and values.
Interested in a career at Moonshot?
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