KIRRA PENDERGAST
HELPING GLOBAL BUSINESS LEADERS
NAVIGATE AN ONLINE WORLD
THAT DIDN’T EXIST YESTERDAY
SPEAKER
AUTHOR
ADVISOR
EXPERT WITNESS
LEADERSHIP COACH
CRISIS MANAGEMENT
Follow Kirra:
One of a very small number of advisors globally who can sit in a regulator’s drafting room, a platform’s engineering review, a board’s risk committee and a school system’s live crisis in the same week — and be credible in all four.
Thirty-five years at the forefront of technology, cybersecurity, digital identity and human digital risk, she advises governments, regulators, Fortune 500 companies, education systems and critical infrastructure on navigating the most complex challenges created by emerging technologies.
Unlike many experts, her work begins long before incidents become headlines. Drawing on both deep technical expertise and her own lived experience as the target of sustained technology-facilitated abuse, she works “on the frontline before the frontline”—helping organisations anticipate, prevent and respond to digital harm before it becomes a crisis.
She is the Founder and Chief Strategist of Safe on Social, the world’s largest independent digital safety education and governance organisation, and Ctrl+Shft, a human digital risk intelligence software platform that helps organisations identify, measure and govern digital risk, AI governance and online safety across their workforce and communities.
Technology changes. Human behaviour doesn’t. That’s where real digital safety begins.
INTERNATIONAL KEYNOTE SPEAKER
Drawing on more than three decades at the frontline before the frontline, she takes the hardest, most tangled issues of the moment and makes them plain — giving every audience something it can grasp in the room and act on the moment it leaves. No jargon. No doom. Just the truth about what's happening, and what to do with it.
People walk away with the rarest thing in a world that refuses to sit still, a clear head about what's coming, and the confidence to move on it now.
FOBISIA Safeguarding Conference - Kellett School - Hong Kong - May 2026
Digital Freedom: A guide to less screen time for safer, happier and healthier families
In this book, Maggie Dent and Kirra Pendergast present
no-nonsense advice for parents on issues such as:
- When and how to give your kids a smart phone?
- How do algorithms, digital footprints and AI really work?
- How can families use social media without sacrificing privacy and safety?
- How can you protect your kids and teens from the darker influences of the internet?
- What do you do if your child is being bullied or exploited online?
- How can you reduce family tension around screen use?
Digital Freedom cuts through the confusion and delivers practical tools and expert advice to help parents manage their family's device use and rediscover moments of screen-free connection and creativity.
"Kirra has a rare ability to translate the most complex digital safety issues into actionable insight. Her keynote left our leadership team genuinely changed in how they think about human online risk."
Chief Risk Officer — Global Financial Institution, London