On behalf of the Trust and Safety Professional Association, we would like to thank each and every attendee that traveled both locally and internationally for this year’s 2025 EMEA Summit. With over 245+ attendees, 66 speakers, 5 exhibitors, representing over 100 companies, this conference continues to exemplify the dynamic nature of trust and safety across regions and importance of bringing this group together. This was also the first time that we introduced the TSPA Member Professional Day, which brought together 40+ attendees for a half-day of focused workshops. We hope that you found the content, connections, and themes to be both informative and inspiring.
This year’s theme was “Owning the Unpredictable: The Future of T&S,” and throughout each panel, presentation, and workshop our speakers highlighted the necessity of partnership across EMEA and in their work.
We kicked off this year’s conference with an inspiring keynote from Chanell Daniels, Digital Catapult, who spoke to this year’s theme and her perspective on navigating uncertainty.
“Maybe this time of knowing that we do not know how to navigate changes in a T&S field is not such a bad thing. Because now we can see the cracks in our working culture, industry, and society that were easier to ignore before. And as societies we are forced to find new ways to address the root causes of the problems—including the challenges with inclusivity and consideration of the global audiences negatively affected by the tech we have been under resourced to work on, and the levels of burnout and trauma in T&S, which have become a normalized part of the job. Things felt more certain in the past and were what we were used to, but they were never really okay, they were just not as bad as they could have been.”
Chanell also spoke to how she is personally navigating the current state of trust and safety:
“With this time of navigating uncertainty, I am leaning into the power of rest and doing whatever I need to take care of myself to make sure I can still be here in some capacity and in some form through the changes, playing whatever role I can handle at the time. And accepting that my role cannot be compared to the ease with which I could do things in the past, when my world felt more stable and change was something I prayed for.”
Summit sessions found attendees hearing more about the impacts of the latest regulation, weaponization of AI in misinformation and armed conflict, mitigating risks in child safety, opportunities to scale trust more effectively, rewarding prosocial behavior, and much more. Attendees also had ample opportunity for connection across companies and roles, as the community engaged in discussion with others working in and around trust and safety.
New this year, the TSPA Member Professional Development Day kicked off with a fireside chat with keynote speakers, Harsha Bhatlapenumarthy and Fadzai Madzingira. They both talked about navigating careers in trust and safety, sources of hope throughout, the importance of community, and the pivots that they’ve experienced along the way.
Harsha Bhatlapenumarthy shared insight on an experience that led to her investment in trust and safety as a career: “In the first few years…when I went through [user] reports, it was the first time I think I had a chance to really connect the dots and understand the kind of human impact…the work we do as a community can have. And I think that made a difference in how I approached my future decisions in terms of whether or not I should stay in trust and safety. Almost 8 years later, I’m still here.”
Fadzai Madzingira discussed what keeps her hopeful in an industry that can be heavy, complex, and constantly changing: “One of the reasons I’m hopeful is because for the first time in the history of our industry, we’re no longer working in silos. We are building communities, we are talking to each other, we’re giving each other advice, we’re helping each other build policies, build better products …Things like hope and resistance are collective action, they’re not individual… Organizations like the TSPA, TSF, [and] any other body that is bringing us together … are part of our collective action towards hope. That actually makes me really hopeful because clearly we are committed to…pushing each other forward.”
The remainder of the Professional Development Day found TSPA members investing in themselves. They attended sessions to build their storytelling and public speaking skills, they collaborated on a crisis simulation, they participated in a workshop around design sprints, and they received coaching on time management.
We would be remiss if we didn’t thank this year’s sponsors, Tech Coalition and Resolver, for making this event possible. We would also like to extend our gratitude to the speakers and panelists, and the EMEA Programme Committee for creating safe spaces for conversation and learning.
ICYMI—we will be back for year 3 in Singapore for the 3rd Annual APAC Summit on 13-14 October! Registration and CFP will be opening soon, so be the first to know by subscribing to our newsletter and following our LinkedIn.