Melinda Sebastian is a senior policy analyst with Data & Society’s Public Technology Leadership Collaborative (PTLC), where she works on fostering tech policy in the public interest. She contributes written materials and research including the PTLC’s monthly “Circle Back” newsletter, leads a group of early career tech policy researchers, and highlights sociotechnical rights-focused research practices to academic, industry, federal, local, and civil society members of the PTLC. Her research utilizes an intersectional ethical approach that focuses on structural inequalities in emergent ethical issues in media, technology, and information policy. Her areas of expertise include surveillance and privacy, AI, sociotechnical design, epistemicide, and platform governance issues including net neutrality, content moderation, and legislative approaches to automation/algorithmic decision-making. She holds a PhD in Culture, Communication, and Media from Drexel University.