Val Elefante

Val Elefante (she/they) is a freelance researcher, project manager, and co-design facilitator specializing in community-led, responsible development of emerging technologies including AI and the decentralized web. With a background in feminist political theory and economics, Val has worked on a variety of projects building more equitable and participatory governance into technology. For TechSoup, Val helped design and build a curriculum about decentralized technology for nonprofits, collecting cutting edge social impact use cases of the tech. For Metagov, Val led user research and a pilot program for an open source tool called Collective Voice, adding interoperable collective decision-making features to Open Collective. Finally, Val is also a founding team member of Lips / Reliabl where she led the co-design of a social media alternative especially for women, non-binary, & LGBTQIA+ creators with innovative, participatory data labeling and content moderation systems. 

Now, Val is contracted with the Center for Cultural Innovation, a California-based nonprofit and tech incubator, leading the collaborative design and development of a rotating savings club DAO for artists and gig workers.