PRESENT
MOMENT
Growing healthy communities
in the digital age
WHAT WE DO
Present Moment opens spaces of imagination and care to solve for the complex issues facing our communities today.
Immense, overlapping challenges at the intersection of technology, climate, and social and change can feel overwhelming and paralyzing. And yet right now is the time to plant the seeds of the future we want.
Present Moment works with local government, public institutions, organizations, and companies to facilitate dialogue, understanding, deliberation, and collective action.
COMMUNITY CONVERSATIONS
We listen, facilitate, and support communities from learning through deliberation and toward collective action.
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Outreach and Engagement
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Listening Sessions
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Convenings and Retreats
Spotlight: Present Moment supports Face Equality International as the community grapples with the impact of facial recognition technologies. See: WIRED, When Face Recognition Doesn’t Know Your Face Is a Face
POLICY DESIGN & GUIDANCE
Spotlight: Present Moment Principal Greta Byrum interviewed community digital safety experts to craft policy recommendations for local government. See: Benton Institute, Building Safety Into Digital Inclusion Efforts
We translate community priorities, concerns, and vision into concrete guidance for governments, organizations, and public institutions. We bring deep expertise in safeguards for emerging technologies.
IMPACT & STRATEGY
We work with communities and stakeholders, using both qualitative and quantitative methods to listen, observe, reflect, document and develop theories of change and pathways of action.
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Program Design & Evaluation
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Participatory Research
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Strategic Advising
Spotlight: Present Moment collaborated with the Twin Cities Innovation Alliance and the NOTICE Coalition to research AI-powered vape detection systems in Minnesota schools. See: Tech Policy Press, Unproven Vape Detection Tech Expands Surveillance in Schools, Threatening Privacy
COMMUNITY RESILIENCE
We support collective self-determination in design & development of community-owned infrastructure.
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Asset Mapping
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Network and Relationship Building
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Offline & Small-Data Models
Spotlight: Greta Byrum on Building the People's Internet, in Urban Omnibus.
VISION
Welcome to the present moment. Now is the time to advance radical imagination and collective action to create the future we want.
Present Moment Enterprises offers strategic and practical services to examine and guide transformation of technology and social infrastructure towards safety, compassion, and collective well-being.
We are a flexible and dynamic collective of researchers, policy experts, technologists, journalists, educators, practitioners, and operations and systems thinkers. Our approach is to provide ease, simplify, and create supportive processes to allow intention and clarity of purpose for communities, businesses, and institutions grappling with technological and social change.
Find us at hello@presentmoment.tech
PEOPLE
GRETA BYRUM
FOUNDER & PRINCIPAL
Greta Byrum is a holistic systems thinker dedicated to building healthy communities. For more than 15 years, she has reimagined tech and information ecosystems to support local access, ownership, trust, and resilience.
Trained as an urban planner, poet, and policy expert, Greta brings a range of technical skills and methods to her work, but always centers the relational practice of listening to the communities who will be most affected by change.
With a track record working in public, private, and nonprofit sectors, Greta has a deep understanding of how to create measurable impact aligned with collective goals and visions. She has experience in technology policy and adoption; program design and evaluation; community development; disaster preparedness, resilience, and distributed systems; and community learning.
Greta has founded and designed several initiatives and programs that continue to have lasting positive impact: Community Tech NY, bringing tools and knowledge to frontline climate communities to sustain healthy communication and information ecosystems; Just Tech, providing deep and holistic support to artists, scholars, and technologists radically imagining brighter futures with technology; and previously, Resilient Communities at New America and the Digital Equity Laboratory at the New School. Greta has also provided consulting services for local governments and public interest clients, most recently with HR&A Advisors, where she led asset mapping and participatory research efforts on behalf of the states of Texas, North Carolina, New York, Cook County IL, and more.
Greta serves on the New York State Regents' Advisory Council on Libraries. She lives in the Hudson Valley, where she walks the Appalachian mountains almost every day and leads No Mud No Lotus, a mindfulness community.
Jordan Shapiro
AFFILIATE
Jordan Shapiro is a data and operations consultant and digital service designer working toward a future where innovation strengthens public systems, empowers communities, and ensures that solutions to the modern era’s evolving challenges serve the public interest.
Previously, Jordan served as an emerging technology policy director in Washington, DC, championing policies that protect consumer privacy, guide the responsible use of AI, and modernize government for greater accountability and trust.
A data expert, she also holds a Master’s degree in International Politics from Aberystwyth University in Wales, UK. Jordan is Co-Chair of Governance on the BetaNYC Associate Board, a SPRITE+ Expert Fellow, and a member of the Turing Institute’s Digital Identity Interest Group.
Todd Whitney
AFFILIATE
Todd Whitney is a researcher-investigator using technologies and storytelling frameworks to open up community-oriented data frameworks and discourses.
Todd is currently a Just Tech Fellow at the Social Science Research Council, teaches at NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program, and is a radio journalist by training.
Yung-Hsuan Wu
AFFILIATE
Yung-Hsuan Wu is a researcher investigating the social impact of AI systems, leveraging both computational data analytics and digital ethnography to create concrete accounts beyond performance metrics.
Yung-Hsuan worked in digital diplomacy and AI governance in Geneva, Switzerland, helping build capacity in diplomats with less digital policymaking experience. He then transitioned to become an algorithmic auditor, using data science skills to interrogate commercial and government use of AI while helping vulnerable communities frame algorithmic harms in their own voice.
Yung-Hsuan also dabbles in civic AI applications as a Newspeak House fellow, exploring if AI could boost public engagement among those whose voices tend to get neglected in civic matters. He co-leads the Not A Stranger initiative, using digital tools to help migrants in the UK challenge the restrictive immigration rule change in 2025.
CONTACT
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