Jerrel Peterson: Spotify's Head of Content Safety Policy on leading with values and looking beyond the obvious

Welcome to the fourth episode of T&S Pro Voices! Today we're sharing Jerrel Peterson's story and this one is a big deal for us. Jerrel is Head of Content Safety Policy at Spotify, where he leads a global team developing content and product policies across music, podcast, audiobook, and GenAI experiences. But what makes his story especially compelling isn't just where he's landed, it's where he started. Jerrel came to T&S not from tech, not from law, not from policy think tanks, but from social work. He spent years providing direct services to marginalized communities before finding his way to Twitter's T&S team in 2015, and he's been making the case ever since that the field needs more people like him. He's an Obama USA Leader, a TSPA advisor, and a key architect of Spotify's first-ever Safety Advisory Council. This is a story about non-linear paths, values under pressure, and why the best T&S professionals might not look like what you'd expect.

What's your journey into Trust and Safety?

I started my career as a social worker providing direct services to various marginalized communities in the U.S. After getting my Master of Social Work (MSW) degree, I transitioned into public policy to try to bridge the gap between what I was seeing on the ground and more macro systems and structures. Unfortunately, I was laid off a couple years later and a friend encouraged me to consider Trust & Safety at a tech company. After a few informational interviews with people in the field, I was fortunate enough to land an entry level role on Twitter’s T&S team in 2015, and I’ve been doing this work ever since.

How has your social work background shaped the way you approach T&S

For the first few months at Twitter, I felt like an imposter but over time I realized my social work training and advocacy skills were incredibly useful for success in this field. Social workers are systems thinkers, we're relationship builders, we're comfortable translating complex information for others, and we work under pressure often in situations of ambiguity. My formal training and experiences helped me eventually find my footing and perspective, specifically my focus on people-centered approaches to T&S work and uplifting the voices of those impacted whether it’s users, creators, content reviewers, or other T&S practitioners. Additionally, social workers are trained on a series of ethics (service, dignity and worth of the person, integrity, competence, etc.), which continue to guide how I respond to the many complexities of moderating online content at scale.

You've been at the centre of some defining moments in T&S - Christchurch, Me Too, elected officials coming online. How do you navigate those as a leader?

I’ve navigated these moments with humility, curiosity and shared accountability:

Humility. While I have formal training and many years of experience, the kinds of issues many T&S practitioners face regularly are incredibly humbling, and we often have to learn and apply new information quickly. And in some cases, we’re doing this while the world watches in real-time. Humility has helped me remain calm and accept that while I may not have all the answers, I can partner with global experts, technologists, and other T&S practitioners to mitigate risks and build solutions that scale.

Curiosity. Context is everything in T&S work, but the right information isn’t always readily available; we have to search for it. There are so many layers to how people communicate and interact with each other online, especially when you consider cultural and regional nuances, community norms, and user expectations. I’ve found it very helpful to ask questions and seek deeper truths as opposed to accepting things at face value.

Shared accountability. Keeping people safe online requires strong collaboration between numerous teams across a business, and the most impactful projects I’ve ever worked on came out of a culture of shared accountability between T&S, R&D, Legal, Government Affairs, and Communications teams. When things went wrong, we all worked closely together to get things back on track.

Can you share a project or moment from your career that you're especially proud of?

Years ago I was part of a small (but very mighty!) team that launched Twitter’s first-ever public comment period as part of the policy development process. It came from an acknowledgement that most users don’t know what a platform’s rules are and the expectation that they should have some say in how their communication and interactions are governed. We also wanted to build understanding among users of the complexity and trade-offs when doing this work at scale. We collected thousands of pieces of feedback and when the policy launched, we told our users how their feedback informed the lines we had drawn as well as next steps. This process cemented for me the value of cross-functional collaboration, transparency, and empowering users to be part of the processes that impact them.

You're a strong advocate for values-based leadership. Can you tell us more about what that means in practice, especially in T&S?

T&S teams are under a lot of pressure and are expected to deliver despite often limited resources and frequently engaging with highly emotionally-charged content. Additionally, their success is often invisible to other stakeholders within the business and the people who use the respective platforms every day. In my experience, leading with integrity, empathy, and authenticity supports stability in a crisis, builds a cohesive and trusting team culture, and provides the right amount of psychological safety for individuals to perform at their best. Values-based leadership also means holding yourself accountable for addressing the structural issues that contribute to burnout, toxicity, and meaning loss among your team. It’s a high bar, but leaders should always try to lead by example.

What's your advice for someone starting out in T&S - particularly those coming from non-traditional backgrounds?

Success in T&S is a marathon, not a sprint. In addition to doing good work, you should also be focused on doing the things outside of work that sustain you, whether it’s community groups, volunteering, physical fitness, gaming, etc. Also, I like to think that we don’t compete in the T&S space, so don’t be afraid to reach out to other practitioners in the field to learn the strategies and best practices that have helped them be successful.

Anything you'd like to add?

To anyone who is hiring in T&S, please be sure to consider candidates with non-traditional backgrounds including social workers or others from the helping professions. Our training and ethics can be a tremendous value-add to the team.

And to those who aren’t hiring but have found success in T&S, make time to connect with people who are looking to transition into the field. Informational interviews are how many of us got our first exposure, so be sure to pay it forward when you can.

A big thank you to Jerrel for sharing his story with such openness and generosity. His journey from front-line social work to leading global content policy at one of the world's most-listened-to platforms, is a powerful challenge to the assumptions we make about who belongs in Trust and Safety. The skills that make a great T&S professional: systems thinking, ethical grounding, comfort with ambiguity, a people-first mindset aren't trained in tech. They're trained in the field, in classrooms, in community centres, in the messy, human work of caring for people. Jerrel has spent his career proving that. We hope his story opens a few more doors and a few more minds.

If you're a Trust and Safety professional with a story to tell, we'd love to hear from you. Simply fill out the form here. We'll review your submission and be in touch if we'd like to feature your story.

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