Hi, my name is Meg Young. I am the director of the AI Civics program at Data & Society where I study how to support the public to contest and shape data and AI systems. Working with community-based organizations and civic institutions, my work aims to deepen public participation in decision-making about how AI is adopted in government, workplaces, and schools. My work to date has chiefly focused on the public sector, collaborating with activists, advocacy groups, and public agencies on capacity-building for digital rights, technology oversight, and public engagement. I previously served as project director of Data & Society’s Algorithmic Impact Methods Lab.

I am a nationally-recognized expert in public engagement methods and promoting digital rights in government uses of AI. I have worked closely with the GovAI Coalition, What Works Cities, City of New York, City of San Jose, and the City of Seattle on public engagement and digital rights work. Our handbook for community engagement was recently published via the GovAI Coalition. I previously served as a fellow with the NYC Office of the Chief Technology Officer and the Office of the Public Advocate, and still closely collaborate with the City of New York via its Office of Technology Innovation.

I am passionate about participatory and rights-protecting models for data and AI governance. I am part of a team with Brown University and the University of Washington exploring the use of open source AI to co-create a journalist-owned LLM. I also spent years working in Seattle to create a data trust pilot called the UW Transportation Data Collaborative as a model to support research access to proprietary data. Our model is being used today in industry via the SAE Mobility Data Collaborative.

I support related work in an advisory role. I’ve served on the Executive Committee of ACM FAccT since 2023, and a steward of the Participatory AI Research and Practice Symposium since 2025. I serve on the Advisory Board of the Being Watched project of Good Systems at University of Texas at Austin and was a coach for Georgetown University Beeck Center’s Policy2Code Challenge. I was also on the Advisory Panel for the Data Empowerment Fund.

I value opportunities to strengthen relationships between with academic researchers and advocates, especially from civil rights and environmental justice groups. As one of the organizers of the ACM Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (FAccT) conference in 2023 and 2024, I worked to bring a the largest-ever number of advocacy groups and activists to present work through practitioner-oriented tracks. This work followed our call as the Critical Platform Studies Group for FAccT to do so, inspired by our collaboration with ACLU WA and the Tech Equity Coalition to create Algorithmic Equity Toolkit. I have also worked as an organizer as part of NYC Tech Action’s Internet for All campaign and with NYC Office of the Public Advocate on #BantheScan.

Previously I was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Cornell Tech Digital Life Initiative with Helen Nissenbaum. My PhD is in information science from the University of Washington in Seattle, where I was part of the UW Tech Policy Lab. My dissertation looked at how government use of proprietary systems impacts public access, accountability, and oversight. My MS in information and BA in cultural anthropology are from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, which is also my hometown.

📄 My CV is here. My Google Scholar page is here.

📯 Get in touch on socials Twitter: @megyoung0, LinkedIn: , and BlueSky:

📬 We can also get in touch on email: my personal email is meg at publictech.space ; my work email is meg at datasociety.net.

🪅 If you are doing work in civic action and AI and want to be in the loop for our community of practice, opportunities, and events, email ai-civics at datasociety.net

💬 I value candor and other perspectives on the work I do; I have set up an anonymous feedback inbox here.

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