With over two decades of experience in product management and consumer product innovation, Fay’s work focuses on fostering trust, safety, and meaningful connection. As a sought-after advisor and keynote speaker, she helps organizations and audiences explore how to create both digital and physical spaces that inspire connection, promote civil discourse, and drive responsible innovation.

She is currently a fellow at Harvard University’s Berkman Klein Institute for Internet and Society where she is doing applied research and product development focused on depolarization and increasing civility in online discourse in the Applied Social Media Lab. In conjunction with this fellowship, Fay is advising several early-stage companies on their trust and safety strategy.

From 2022 to 2023, Fay served as the Head of Product for Neighborhood Vitality at Nextdoor, overseeing trust & safety, the AI pillar, consumer privacy, content moderation, and initiatives to promote kind conversations across the platform. Before Nextdoor, she was one of two Directors of Product Management at X (formerly Twitter), where she led product teams focused on improving reporting and appeals experiences, self-remediation and support tools, regulatory compliance, and consumer privacy. (TechCrunch; AdWeek)

From 2017 to 2021, Fay led Meta’s product efforts to enhance transparency, fairness, and oversight in content moderation. During her tenure, she spearheaded key initiatives such as developing the product strategy and systems architecture for Facebook’s Oversight Board, crafted a company-wide strategy for regulatory compliance, managed efforts to comply with the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) for minors, founded the first Youth Wellbeing team and drove initiatives to ensure fairness in machine learning and enforcement actions.

Prior to Facebook, Fay founded and served as the CEO of deliberateLIFE, a consumer technology company focused on ethical consumption and sustainability. She led a team of over 40 staff and contributors, delivering impactful solutions in the space. Fay is also the principal of Red Balloon Ideas, an innovation firm supporting social impact initiatives through ethnographic research, human-centered design, product management, and strategy consulting.

In 2015, Fay founded Deliberate Discourse, an anti-bias and depolarization experience rooted in the cognitive science of behavior change. Participants reflect on their personal histories and beliefs as part of a broader dialogue on complex issues such as racism, gender bias, and identity. Companies like Google, Uber, and Boston Consulting Group leverage the experience for team building and unconscious bias training. Designed in response to the ongoing violence against Black men in America, this introspective and empathy-building experience has evolved to address a wide range of divisive topics. To date, over 5,000 participants across 15+ cities have engaged with Deliberate Discourse.

During the course of her career Fay has served as the Co-Director of the U.S. Congressional Human Rights Caucus, as a key staff member on the Africa and Global Health Subcommittee of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, and as a humanitarian policy advisor for Oxfam. Fay has been directly involved in passing legislation, distributing humanitarian aid and mobilizing action from hundreds of thousands of people through her education and activism work.

Born in South Africa and raised in Silicon Valley, Fay is a global soul with a deep curiosity about what makes people and places unique. Having visited over 40 countries and worked in Hungary, India, Ethiopia, and Kenya, she brings a global perspective to her engagements. A sought after public speaker and facilitator, Fay leverages both playfulness and a deep understanding of neuroscience in her work.

Fay holds a master's degree from Georgetown University and a bachelor of arts from UCLA.