"Fay is a highly effective product leader able to drive significant impact in a complex space like Trust & Safety. As a fellow industry leader, I’ve had the pleasure of connecting with Fay on an array of safety issues and products. In addition to the clear expertise, Fay has been instrumental in driving Nextdoor, Twitter, and Meta’s strategic T&S initiatives. Her dedication to leveraging responsible innovation is clear but she is also adept at nurturing high-performing teams. Fay’s profound understanding of online safety, content moderation, and consumer privacy, coupled with her expertise in responsible AI and equity in machine learning, make her a vanguard in the field. Her global perspective and commitment to human-centered solutions stand as a testament to her ability to address complex challenges with innovative, inclusive, and sustainable strategies.”

– Jeff Dunn, VP of Trust & Safety, Hinge

“Fay is a dream manager. I reported to Fay during at Twitter in 2022 while working on a major company initiative. She brought structure to our team, has the rare ability to lead impactful and educational team meetings, gave great career development guidance, and quickly and effectively unblocked whenever needed. Fay is also a great product manager -- she cares about customers and solving business problems. Work aside, she was always fun and genuine. Any team would be lucky to have her!”

– Ronny Beer, Former Product Manager, Twitter

“Fay is an organized, creative, and skilled Product Manager. Fay created and refined the vision for a newly formed team and rallied the individual team members behind it. One of the projects we worked on as a team involved a lot of cross-team coordination, constantly evolving requirements, and tight deadlines. Fay built strong relationships with our collaborators and ensured that everyone was focused so that ultimately we could deliver a successful outcome on-time. I would love to work with her again.”

– Wendy Mu, Engineering Manager, Meta

"Having worked closely with Fay Johnson, I can attest to her exceptional domain expertise in designing trustworthy products and minimizing user harm. Fay has a deep understanding of how to increase transparency in otherwise opaque content moderation systems, thereby enhancing their legitimacy. Her strategic insights and practical approach to product and operational challenges make her an invaluable asset. I highly recommend Fay for any organization looking to navigate complex trust and safety issues.”

– Oscar Rodriguez, VP of Product Trust, LinkedIn

"Fay Johnson has been extremely helpful in improving VRChat's trust and safety efforts. She performed a thorough assessment of our current systems, giving us some really valuable insights. Her advice on product and operations has helped us build a stronger foundation for the future. Fay’s thoughts on team structure, role clarity, and hiring have been key to making sure we scale effectively. Plus, her coaching and mentorship have boosted our team’s skills and confidence. She continues to play an important role in making VRChat a safer and more inclusive platform. Highly recommend her as a thought leader in the Trust & Safety space."

– Chandra Janakiraman, Chief Product Officier, VRChat

“I had the privilege to work with Fay for more than one year on the Oversight Board project and was deeply impressed by her passion for community integrity and transparency, her sharp product sense, and her extraordinary leadership. She successfully led a big team (40+) to turn a vague idea into the revolutionary product in the Internet industry from scratch after solving tons of complex problems and leading an unbelievable amount of XFN collaborations. She can always connect and inspire people around her to achieve our goal while helping them grow. You will always be surprised by how much and she can do. She is definitely one of the best leaders, partners, and mentors that I have worked with and I will be more than thrilled to work with her again.”

– Qiushi Zhang, Engineer, Meta

Impact Advising

"Fay Johnson has been a joy to work with both professionally and personally.  Her ability to discern and navigate cultural and relational complexity sets her apart in a unique way within the world of non-profit / humanitarian work where nothing is formulaic.  Perhaps her greatest gift though is as a communicator and unifier, where misunderstanding and division are always the end of good ideas and intentions. Dealing with wide ranges of personalities and vision statements within the context of social justice is par for the course, and Fay has proven herself more than capable of holding people together and to a common goal even within the most difficult and enduring of circumstances. I would recommend Fay to any individual, organization, or coalition of organizations without flinching.  She is a phenomenally gifted individual capable of executing a well vetted plan in clarity, or researching and implementing one out of ambiguity."

– Brad Corrigan, Musician, Dispatch. Founder, Love Light & Melody

"Fay and I worked together in Oxfam on humanitarian policy issues affecting our respective programs in Ethiopia and Somalia.  In a complex region, she identified strategic issues needing to be addressed, and was able to quickly organize policy documents to guide Oxfam's advocacy in these areas.  She is quick to grasp the essentials ofany situation regarding humanitarian affairs and how Oxfam should engage.  I am impressed by her pro-active approach to challenges, and would highly recommend her for any position demanding the ability to master complex issues, quickly."

–  Robert Maletta, Former Regional Policy Advisor, Oxfam

Behavior Change Training

"Fay Johnson and Red Balloon Idea’s commitment to social change is unyielding. Throughout the duration of working with Fay, she has gone above and beyond to utilize her skills, experience and creativity to guide us through the development and branding of a campaign to promote latrine adoption, the "NuChoo" Campaign. We know that the training she provided our staff on product design, user experience and behavior change and her strategic guidance as we launched Nuru’s Social Marketing program will be instrumental in driving us toward the long-term impact in the communities Nuru currently works with in Kenya, and soon beyond."

–  Lindsay Cope, Sr Program Mngr, Healthcare; Nuru International

"Red Balloon Ideas was instrumental in setting up Nuru International’s Social Marketing department here in Kenya. Fay Johnson guided the US and Kenyan teams throughout the first social marketing campaign and brought a level of commitment, professionalism and experience that has proven to be invaluable. During a field visit to Kenya, Fay worked directly with the local staff to come up with a campaign and messages that were both tailored and effective. It has been a joy to put several of Fay’s innovative ideas into practice and see the transformative results. Thanks to Red Balloon Ideas, we feel confident to move forward and used the social marketing process to promote other good behaviors as part of Nuru’s mission to end extreme poverty."

  – Claire Rumpsa, Program Manager; Nuru International

Teaching Social Entrepreneurship

Fay is an extremely knowledgeable and skilled educator in the field of entrepreneurship. She led a week-long workshop for an all-girls classroom of Kenyan students (from Kisaruni School) and Bay Area students (from Castilleja School) in Kenya. Her knowledge of the design thinking process and experience facilitating groups allowed her to leverage the cultural differences between the students to enhance their understanding of entrepreneurship on a global scale. She quickly became seen as a leader in our group and a mentor for the students. She was a joy to work with as a trip co-lead; I would highly recommend her!

 – Emily Entress, Leadership & Partnerships, Castilleja School

“Fay is a gifted product manager who understands how to get the best out of people. Fay and I worked together on the Health Experiences team at Twitter. During that time, Fay crafted impactful business proposals and implemented a new org structure that enabled the Health Experiences teams to execute on priorities during a time of extreme volatility.

The fact that Fay is able to lead through change and deal with conflicting priorities in high pressure situations is just one of the reasons she stands out as a Director of Product. Her ability to manage multiple stakeholders, with competing priorities, is one of the key reasons we were able to implement the new org structure and start executing on projects when others in the organization were still trying to figure out a game plan.

Fay takes a holistic approach to building teams, something that doesn’t always happen when managers are vying for headcount for their own orgs. Fay, however, successfully worked across multiple orgs to find headcount for two new content designers to partner with hers -- even after Twitter had paused hiring for almost all roles. In addition to all of this, Fay is an incredible people manger. In a remote work environment, it can be difficult to bring a sense of camaraderie to teams. But Fay knows how to bring people together with a tone of positive energy that is absolutely contagious. Fay is the ultimate Director of Product and will be an asset to any company.”

– Lisa Jennings Young, Former Content Strategist, Twitter

Employee Workshop: Making a Difference

“We loved having Fay speak to our staff about Choices That Change Things. She provided a unique perspective on how our employees could make a positive impact in the world without quitting their day jobs (which we appreciate). Her presentation was well received – 76% of attendees said the information was relevant for their job. We are happy to be engaged with deliberateLIFE.”

– Joe Hill, Human Resources, SanDisk

Design Thinking 101

We had the pleasure of having Fay run a human-centered design workshop for our nonprofit YCore. Fay was able to provide an overview of human-centered design and rapid prototyping, as well as provide individual feedback and advice to our teams all in the space of 90-mins. She was engaging, enthusiastic, and an absolute joy to have at our workshop. I would highly recommend her to lead workshops on human-centered design, social entrepreneurship, and international development.  

– Olivia Bryant, BCG Digital Ventures

“Fay has a been a lifesaver for us. She’s helped on several important projects both at the front end – developing strategy, creating clear plans, setting goals – and at the back end – cleaning up messes, fixing problems and evaluating activities. In every case, she’s delivered high quality service, thoughtful, creative (without being chaotic), and reliable.” 

– Gawain Kripke, Director of Policy, Oxfam America