Dignity
A person's images and story are theirs to control. We restore that control, never trade on it.
Our Story
Built by survivors,
for survivors.
The Digital Identity Foundation, a Delaware 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, was founded by survivors who have lived the consequences of image-based sexual abuse, and who have spent decades building the legal, policy, and service infrastructure to reimagine an Internet that supports survivors, not their abusers.
Why We Exist
A crisis without the infrastructure to meet it
Image-based sexual abuse affects one in five American adults. For people under 24, that number is nearly one in two. Generative AI has made fabrication cheap and easy (anyone can be a victim), and harm is spreading faster than law or service systems can keep up.
Effective detection and removal technology now exists, and new federal and state laws are being passed. But most survivors never get the chance to use any of it. They don't know their rights. They can't afford the technology. The people around them, from law enforcement to counselors to campus administrators, often don't know how to help either.
Behind every statistic is someone lying awake, wondering if the images will ever really be gone. That fear is what we exist to end.
The Digital Identity Foundation was built to change what happens next. We connect survivors to services. We equip responders with knowledge. We hold infrastructure companies accountable. And we publish the data that makes better law possible.
Sister Organizations
Independent, and stronger together
The Digital Identity Foundation is an independent 501(c)(3) charity. We work in close partnership with Protect Privacy AI, the technology company founded by our own founder, which builds the detection and removal tools survivors need. That partnership is what lets our scholarships put real, working technology directly into survivors' hands, and it powers the research we publish. The Foundation is governed by its own board and a conflict-of-interest policy that keep our charitable mission independent and our decisions accountable to the survivors we serve.
Our mark is a hummingbird with an aster at its heart
The aster has long stood for dignity and justice, the belief that every person's worth is theirs by right and cannot be taken. We placed it where the heart belongs, because dignity is not what a survivor earns back at the end of the journey. It is what was always theirs.
The hummingbird is the survivor themself. They are small enough to be underestimated and fast enough to be unstoppable. They hover in stillness while their wings move faster than the eye can see, and they find sweetness in places others overlook. Their colors are not painted on. They refract through them like light through a prism, iris into jade into plum, and every one of them they earned.
They are rising. And they are not rising alone.
What We Stand For
Vision, Mission & Core Values
Vision
A world free of image-based sexual abuse, where every person's dignity and digital identity are their own.
Mission
We give survivors the tools, support, and legal rights to erase their abuse, and we work to dismantle the systems that enable it.
Core Values
Trust
Confidential, trauma-informed, and safe by design, at every point of contact.
Accountability
We hold platforms to their obligations, and we hold ourselves to the same standard of transparency and independence.
Rigor
Evidence-based and technically excellent. We publish what the data shows, even when it is inconvenient.
Hope
We lead with restoration, not despair.
Leadership
Leadership
Andrea Powell
Executive Director
Andrea Powell is an internationally recognized policy leader, author, and advocate with more than two decades of experience fighting image-based sexual abuse and sex trafficking. She is the founder of FAIR Girls and Karana Rising, co-founder of STISA.network and NCVIC.org, and author of the two-time award-winning 2024 memoir Believe Me. Her advocacy has reached four White House administrations, the UN Human Rights Council, UN Women, and the U.S. Departments of Health and Human Services and Justice. A survivor herself, Andrea brings a trauma-informed lens to every program she leads.
Dawn Hawkins
Founder & Board President
Dawn Hawkins is the founder and CEO of Protect Privacy AI, the technology company building detection, removal, and prevention infrastructure for image-based sexual abuse. She has been personally targeted by deepfake abuse, an experience that shapes her work. Before founding Protect Privacy AI, she served as Executive Director and then CEO of the National Center on Sexual Exploitation for about 14 years, where she built its law center, launched its research institute, and was a central architect of the Take It Down Act. She serves as Board President in a volunteer capacity.
Governance
Board of Directors
Mariah Rief
Survivor advocate, founder of Undox content removal service, and leading voice on California IBSA legislation.
Olivia Chung
Director of Communications at the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.
Lisa Thompson
Treasurer
A decade of research and policy experience at the National Center on Sexual Exploitation.
Anna McAdams
Survivor advocate whose family's experience with AI-generated deepfake abuse helped drive passage of the Take It Down Act.
Counsel
Senior Advisors
Ebony Tucker
Heads Women's and Personal Safety Policy at Uber.
Kenya Davis
Former federal prosecutor and Co-Chair of the D.C. Human Trafficking Task Force.
Matt Grady
Former U.S. Department of Justice official.
Elliston Berry
Survivor advocate whose courage at 14 helped pass the Take It Down Act. The Aster Ellis Program is named in her honor.