Meet the Team

​​We are a collective of women and non-binary safety experts with extensive careers in media and human rights. We use our decades of experience, specialized knowledge and myriad skills to help journalists, documentarians, media workers and others manage the risks inherent in their work.

Photograph of Jeje Mohamed

  • Jeje Mohamed is a holistic safety and security advisor and risk management expert. She co-founded Aegis Safety Alliance, a collective of women and non-binary media safety experts. She has extensive experience in journalism, human rights, and safety and security. She offers holistic, trauma-informed, identity-centered safety training and resources focused on digital safety, physical safety, de-escalation, and psychological first aid. Mohamed works with journalists, documentarians, media-makers, and human rights activists working in various contexts, working with newsrooms, media agencies, and NGOs.

    Previously, Mohamed was the Senior Manager for Digital Safety and Free Expression at PEN America, where she led the training program and resource building. She was a Next-Gen Safety Trainers fellow with the International Women’s Media Foundation, developing holistic safety training programs and incident response support for journalists. She has worked as a journalist in Egypt and the United States, producing documentaries and podcasts on human rights abuses and leading human rights programs focused on combatting sex trafficking.

    She received her bachelor’s degree from American University in Cairo in multimedia journalism and international relations and her master’s degree from American University in Washington, DC, in international media, focusing on human rights and democracy in areas of conflict as an Open Society Foundation Civil Society Leadership Award Fellow. She serves on the advisory board for the Coalition Against Online Violence and was a fellow with the Online News Association’s Women’s Leadership Accelerator.

  • Yemile Bucay (she/her) is a journalism risk advisor and safety trainer working to promote a culture of safety in the profession in order to have a sustainable, resilient, and free press. She advises newsrooms like The Atlantic and NGOs like PEN America’s Free Expression Programs on safety and security matters and is a resident security advisor to Newmark J-School students and faculty.

    Formerly, she was BuzzFeed’s Risk and Security Manager and a trainer at the New York Time’s Adversarial Reporter Training (ART School). She was also a fellow in the International Women’s Media Foundation’s Next Gen Safety Trainers program. Before working in news safety, Yemile was a journalist who reported on immigration, produced a documentary on violence in her native Mexico, led research on online information ecosystems, and taught the business of journalism at Columbia’s Journalism School.

    Yemile received a B.A. in Humanities from Yale University, and a Masters in Journalism from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism.

  • Tara Pixley, Ph.D. is a queer, Jamaican-American photojournalist, media safety + equity consultant and professor based in Los Angeles. Her 20-year career as a visual journalist has taken her from the ships of eco-pirates and Central American migrant shelters to the U.S. presidential campaign trail. Her writing and photography have appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, NPR, Newsweek, Hollywood Reporter, People Magazine, ProPublica, HuffPost, ESPN, and many other outlets. The Reynolds Journalism Institute named Tara a 2022-2023 RJI Fellow to produce Journalism Source of Safety (J-SOS), a project that networks visual journalists globally to offer trauma and identity-informed risk management resources for journalists.

    She is also a 2022 Pulitzer Center grantee, 2021 IWMF NextGen Safety Trainers Fellow, 2020 awardee of the inaugural World Press Photo Solutions Visual Journalism Initiative and was a 2016 Visiting Knight Fellow at Harvard University's Nieman Foundation for Journalism. Tara serves her colleagues in the photo industry as Secretary of the National Press Photographers Association Board; a Board Member for stock photo co-cop Stocksy; and as Director of Authority Collective — an organization dedicated to establishing equity for women of color in visual media.

  • Holly Pickett is a photojournalist and journalist safety trainer and consultant currently based in Montana. Her journalism career spans two decades, one of which she spent as a Middle East-based freelancer--covering human migration, social movements, conflict, politics, and gender issues. She has reported from dozens of countries, including Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Gaza, Egypt, Yemen, Turkey, Lebanon, Greece, Russia, Sierra Leone, Sudan, and the U.S. Her work has appeared in publications such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Yorker, Le Monde, Financial Times, TIME, Stern, Paris Match, NPR.org, and The New Republic, among many others. Before moving overseas, she was a staff photographer at The Spokesman-Review newspaper in Spokane, Wash.

    Holly was a 2008 Arthur F. Burns fellow, a 2014 Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting grantee, and a 2018 IWMF African Great Lakes Reporting fellow in both Rwanda and DRC. She is a member of the Everyday Projects, Women Photograph, and the Frontline Freelance Register. She is also a member of the IWMF’s inaugural cohort of Next Gen Safety Trainers. She is a frequent guest lecturer for educational institutions, journalism associations, and service organizations, and is a mentor in New York University’s global journalism department.

  • Jen Byers (they/them) is an investigative journalist and producer.

    They specialize in covering social justice movements, domestic conflict and solutions to the climate crisis.

    Their work has appeared in places like Al Jazeera, The Guardian and Hulu / Showtime.