Before the Present Moment - Experience & Competencies
- greta914
- Sep 6
- 2 min read
Updated: Sep 18
Before founding Present Moment, Greta Byrum envisioned and built community technology ecosystems in the public interest for over 15 years.
As a founder and leader in public interest tech, Greta is an expert in strategic planning, program design & implementation, and grantmaking & development. She has been the driving force behind the creation of organizations and programs that rise to meet moments of technological disruption with creativity and care.
Leadership and Innovation
Led design and launch of Just Tech, a fellowship and program dedicated to radically imagining just, equitable, and brilliant futures by developing visionary leadership by nontraditional technologists, researchers, journalists, artists, and practitioners.
Co-founder and co-director of Community Tech NY, a non-profit organization that collaborates with local groups to create community-owned internet infrastructure for emergencies and everyday resilience and self-determination. CTNY partners with local organizations to co-design and co-create healthy digital ecosystems with joy and collective vision.
Designer and co-director of the Digital Equity Laboratory, a New School research institute founded by Maya Wiley that uncovered and addressesed structural inequities that persist and evolve as technology transforms our cultural, social, and political systems.
Led program design, outreach, launch and implementation of 5-neighborhood
community wireless project in partnership with HUD and the New York City Economic Development Corporation. Sub-granted to local CBOs in disaster-vulnerable neighborhoods to build wireless networks and train residents as Digital Stewards for collaborative network design, maintenance, expansion, and emergency preparedness.
Broadband and Digital Opportunity Research & Planning
Led research design, broadband & digital opportunity planning, and evaluation efforts on behalf US states including New York, Maine, California, Texas, and Rhode Island as Principal with HR&A Advisors' Broadband and Digital Opportunity team. In consultation with local communities, led development of North Carolina's Tech Resource Finder and Texas' Digital Opportunity Hub.
As a Fellow with the Benton Institute for Broadband and Society, led a qualitative study of digital safety as a component of tech inclusion efforts.
Community Technology
Community technology is an alternative vision of technology in which communities build resilience, joy, and self-determination, and power. It is also method of teaching and learning grounded in deep listening to facilitate a healthy integration of technology into lives and communities.
As founding member of the Community Tech Collective, Greta believes in the Detroit Digital Justice Coalition's principles of Access, Participation, Common Ownership, and Healthy Communities.
Greta's writing and thinking on Community Tech:
