Tawana Petty

Tawana Petty is a mother, social justice organizer, poet, author, and facilitator. Her work focuses on racial justice, equity, privacy, and consent. She currently serves as a Just Tech Fellow with the Social Science Research Council.

Petty is an alumni fellow of the Digital Civil Society Lab at Stanford PACS, the Detroit Equity Action Lab, and Art Matters, and has been a convening member of the Detroit Digital Justice Coalition since 2016. She also serves as the founding Executive Director of Petty Propolis, a Black women-led artist incubator primarily focused on cultivating visionary resistance through poetry, literacy and literary workshops, anti-racism facilitation, and community-centered initiatives.

Petty has been honored with several awards. She was honored with a Certificate of Special Congressional Recognition and with Wayne State University’s Center for Peace and Conflict Studies Peacemaker Award in 2018. In 2021, she was named one of 100 Brilliant Women in AI Ethics, and in 2023, Petty was honored with the AI Policy Leader in Civil Society Award by the Center for AI and Digital Policy.