Steven Macchia

Trust and Safety and compliance leader with 7+ years of experience building and scaling global programs for high-volume UGC platforms, including an ecosystem generating approximately four billion monthly hours of UGC. Expertise spans AI-assisted content moderation, privacy governance, child safety, CSAM response, law enforcement investigations, policy, escalations, and operational risk. Known for translating complex safety and regulatory requirements into practical product workflows, cross-functional programs, and measurable outcomes, including a 51% reduction in policy-violating content and more than $1M in projected annual savings.

Head of Global Compliance and Trust & Safety at Medal.tv (2024-09 – Present)

• Lead global compliance and privacy operations across GDPR, CCPA, DSA, DPIAs, ROPA, DSARs, data retention, privacy governance, and third-party vendor oversight.
• Direct Trust and Safety programs supporting moderation of millions of user-generated videos, images, and text submissions each week.
• Lead the selection, implementation, and continuous improvement of AI-assisted moderation capabilities, including OCR, Hive, audio transcription, automated scanning, risky-content detection, reputation signals, appeals, and youth-safety controls.
• Translate policy, compliance, and operational needs into product requirements and success measures, partnering with engineering, product, data, legal, and operations teams while serving as the program and domain lead.
• Manage sensitive CSAM-related escalations, internal investigations, preservation requests, and law enforcement inquiries in coordination with NCMEC, legal counsel, and relevant authorities, maintaining strict confidentiality and procedural compliance.
• Support contracts, DPAs, data-processing reviews, and vendor governance for AI and technology partners, including Deepgram; proactively assess emerging AI, privacy, moderation, and platform-integrity risks.

Senior Manager, Trust and Safety at Medal.tv (2024-01 – 2024-09)

• Led migration of AI-assisted moderation and scanning solutions for visual and text-based content across a short-form video platform.
• Directed the zero-to-one development of a platform-wide user reputation system projected to save more than $100K annually while improving moderation efficiency and enforcement accuracy.
• Defined safety use cases, escalation logic, operational requirements, and success metrics; combined signals from multiple safety systems to identify harmful behavior, moderation gaps, and retention opportunities.

Program Manager, Trust and Safety at Medal.tv (2022-01 – 2024-01)

Built and scaled foundational Trust and Safety programs for a global gaming UGC platform processing millions of content items daily.

• Created Community Standards, enforcement guidance, implementation standards, and escalation workflows for child safety, severe abuse, illegal content, and other high-risk matters.
• Established Medal's partnership with NCMEC and strengthened child-safety reporting, response, and cross-functional investigation procedures.
• Analyzed user trends, moderation signals, and platform data to guide product, policy, and enforcement decisions; cultivated partnerships with safety organizations across gaming and technology.

Program Manager, Community Ops at Medal.tv (2020-04 – 2022-03)

• Established and managed Medal's first Community, Social Media, and Trust and Safety functions in a fast-moving startup environment.
• Developed Community Standards, implementation guidance, enforcement procedures, and operational playbooks from scratch, reducing policy-violating UGC by 51%.
• Connected community insights with product, support, and platform-safety initiatives while managing engagement across social channels.

Trust and Safety Team Lead at Cognizant (2018-11 – 2020-04)

• Supervised three teams of up to 60 employees supporting community operations and content moderation; distributed urgent policy guidance across a site of more than 300 moderators.
• Developed and delivered training on sensitive and emerging safety issues using operational data and evolving policy requirements.

Community Manager and Technical Support Representative at Survival Servers (2016-01 – 2018-07)

• Grew and supported an online gaming community across forums and social platforms while providing technical support to thousands of customers.
• Administered MySQL databases and resolved hosting issues using Zendesk and Tawk.to, helping maintain service and server integrity.

The New School, BA in Humanitarian Intervention