Originally published on TED in February, 2016.
We don’t have to live in a world where 99 percent of rapists get away with it, says TED Fellow Jessica Ladd. With Callisto, a new platform for college students to confidentially report sexual assault, Ladd is helping survivors get the support and justice they deserve while respecting their privacy concerns. “We can create a world where there’s a real deterrent to violating the rights of another human being,” she says.
Jessica Ladd
Founder and CEO, Sexual Health Innovations
Jessica Ladd is using technology to advance sexual health in the US.
Why you should listen
Jessica Ladd is the Founder and CEO of Sexual Health Innovations and a TED Fellow. She has been honored as a Fearless Changemaker by the Case Foundation, an Emerging Innovator by Ashoka and American Express, and as the Civic Hacker of the Year by Baltimore Innovation Week.
Before founding Sexual Health Innovations, Ladd worked in the White House Office of National AIDS Policy, as a Public Policy Associate at The AIDS Institute and as a sexual health educator and researcher for a variety of organizations. She also founded The Social Innovation Lab in Baltimore and a chapter of FemSex at Pomona College. She received her Masters in Public Health at Johns Hopkins and her BA in Public Policy/Human Sexuality at Pomona College. She left a PhD program in infectious disease epidemiology at Johns Hopkins in order to pursue work at Sexual Health Innovations full-time.
Ladd has created a platform, Callisto, for students to report assaults online without having to identify their assailant — a type of information escrow that only releases information to a third party if certain pre-agreed conditions are met, such as if someone else reports the same attacker.
