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10 GitHub trust and safety experts
These ten current and former GitHub staff have worked in trust and safety, platform health, safety engineering, abuse detection and user policy roles at the company. A reader can learn how trust and safety work is organized at a company like GitHub from people who have done it.
Professionals to explore
01—10Benjamin J. Balter
LinkedInExperience: Senior Product Manager, Trust and Safety · GitHub
Former Senior Product Manager, Trust and Safety at GitHub (2016–2021). The profile headline describes ten years at GitHub across trust and safety, platform security and developer platforms. Benjamin J. Balter later held GitHub roles as Chief of Staff, Security (2021–2023), Director of Engineering Operations and Culture (2023–2024) and Director of Hubber (Employee) Enablement in the Office of the COO (2024–2026).
Benjamin Steenholdt
LinkedInExperience: Trust and Safety Specialist · GitHub
Trust and Safety Specialist at GitHub since July 2019, based in the Netherlands. The profile describes Benjamin Steenholdt as a legal consultant specializing in copyright and malware prevention on platforms built on user-generated content, and says the work at GitHub aims to keep it a diverse and productive platform for open source developers.
Caite Palmer
LinkedInExperience: Safety & Integrity Safety Analyst · GitHub
Former Safety & Integrity Safety Analyst at GitHub (2019–2025), based in Iowa. The profile headline describes Caite Palmer as an ex-GitHub trust and safety analyst focused on spotting patterns, protecting the platform and building scalable defenses. Caite has also co-hosted the Barnyard Language Podcast since 2021.
Clarissa Fetrow
LinkedInExperience: Safety Analyst · GitHub
Safety Analyst at GitHub since April 2024, based in Seattle, where the profile describes finding and removing bad actors at scale on the GitHub platform. Clarissa Fetrow was previously a Review Analyst, Platform Health at GitHub (2018–2024), a role the profile describes as discovering and actioning abuse at scale.
Daniel Winters
LinkedInExperience: Trust & Safety Specialist - Technical · GitHub
Trust & Safety Specialist - Technical at GitHub since June 2022, based in Melbourne, where the profile says Daniel Winters works to keep GitHub a safe and welcoming place for developers. Daniel was earlier a public servant with the Queensland Government (2017–2022) and worked as a full stack web developer and as an operations manager and lead developer.
Elizabeth McGrew
LinkedInExperience: User Policy Specialist · GitHub
Former User Policy Specialist at GitHub (2015–2019) in San Francisco, where the profile says Elizabeth McGrew handled site policy violations ranging from the mildly annoying to the outright illegal, including abuse tickets. Elizabeth has been a Policy Operations Specialist at Shopify since October 2020.
Jonathan Hoyt
LinkedInExperience: Principal Engineer · GitHub
Principal Engineer at GitHub since December 2024, where the profile says Jonathan Hoyt leads engineering efforts for Safety & Integrity, supporting the Platform Health, Trust & Safety Engineering and Privacy Engineering teams with a focus on scaling abuse detection and prevention systems. Jonathan was earlier Senior Engineer (2016–2019), Staff Engineer and Staff Engineering Manager at GitHub.
Rachel Cohen
LinkedInExperience: Staff Manager, Safety Engineering · GitHub
Staff Manager, Safety Engineering at GitHub since February 2025, where the profile says Rachel Cohen leads the Trust & Safety and Platform Health Engineering teams building systems that detect and mitigate spam, abuse, malware and other violating content. Rachel was a Senior Engineering Manager at GitHub (2022–2025) and earlier a cyber software engineer at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory.
Russell Horton
LinkedInExperience: Staff Security Analyst · GitHub
Former Staff Security Analyst (2022–2023) and Senior Security Analyst (2018–2022) at GitHub, where the profile says Russell Horton built and maintained the team's machine learning service for abuse classification and led abuse risk assessment and mitigation for GitHub products including Actions. Russell was then a Staff AI Researcher at GitHub Next (2023–2026) and joined Imbue in September 2026.
Sarah K.
LinkedInExperience: Trust & Safety · GitHub
Trust & Safety at GitHub since August 2020, based in San Francisco. The profile highlights experience with consistent policy enforcement. Sarah K. was earlier a QA associate and associate manager at Checkr, a search ad operations specialist at Google and a music researcher team lead at YouTube.
Choose the right perspective
Match the person's area to your question, since safety engineers, abuse detection analysts, product managers and policy enforcement specialists each saw different parts of the work. Check the years each person was at the company, since a role held in one period may not reflect how the work is done there today.
Questions to take into the conversation
- 01How does a developer platform detect and remove spam, malware and abusive content hosted in code repositories?
- 02How do policy enforcement specialists and safety engineers split the work of handling abuse reports at scale?
- 03How do you assess abuse risk when launching a new product such as hosted compute on a developer platform?
Reaching GitHub trust and safety experts
How can I contact one of these GitHub trust and safety experts?
Pick one of the 10 people on this page and choose "Book a paid call", or describe your project to find others. You offer a fee for a 15-minute call or a written answer, Instant Expert finds the person's work email and sends the invitation, and they decide whether to accept. The list covers 1 company: GitHub, based on profile data retrieved on October 10, 2026. Being listed here doesn't mean someone has agreed to take calls.
How much does it cost to reach GitHub trust and safety experts?
You choose the offer, starting at $5 per person. It includes Instant Expert's 20% fee, so an offer that pays the person $100 costs you $125. You're charged only when the person books the call or sends the answer.
What if they don't reply?
You pay nothing. Instant Expert sends follow-up reminders, and if the person hasn't booked or answered within 7 days, the request expires and any hold on your card is released. You can invite several of the 10 people on this list at once and cap your total spend, so you pay only for the ones who accept.
Can an AI agent ask one of these GitHub trust and safety experts a question?
Yes. An agent with a USDC wallet on Base can ask one question without an Instant Expert account. It names the person, for example by the LinkedIn URL on this page, and pays per ask over x402 (HTTP 402). The person answers in writing or by voice note, and if nobody answers within 7 days, the payment goes back to the wallet automatically. x402 docs
About this directory
This is a professional research starting point based on business profile data retrieved on . Titles and companies reflect that source snapshot and may describe past or present roles. Check the linked profiles for current details. Inclusion does not imply Instant Expert membership or availability.
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