ElsaMarie D'Silva
ElsaMarie D’Silva (pronouns: she/her) is a social entrepreneur and systems thinker committed to advancing gender equity and safety through data-driven, scalable solutions. She is the Founder of Red Dot Foundation (India) and President and CEO of Red Dot Foundation Global (USA), best known for its flagship platform, Safecity. Launched in December 2012, Safecity crowdsources personal stories of sexual violence and abuse in public spaces and has grown to become the largest open-access data platform on gender-based violence in India, with global reach across more than 17 countries.
By harnessing citizen-generated data, ElsaMarie has pioneered a replicable model for identifying patterns of violence, mobilising communities, and shaping evidence-based policies with police, city planners, and transport authorities - transforming systemic responses to gender-based violence in both urban and rural contexts. Her work is rooted in the belief that safety is foundational to development, and that scalable, tech-enabled, community-led interventions can shift entrenched gender and power dynamics in underserved communities.
In his keynote at the 9th Global Forum of the United Nations Alliance of Civilisations, UN Secretary-General António Guterres said: “I am thinking of people like ElsaMaria D’Silva from India, who co-founded a platform that crowdsources and maps sexual violence and harassment... Her efforts are mobilising thousands of young people around the world to break the silence and end gender-based violence.” He added that such examples fill him with hope for the future.
ElsaMarie serves on the advisory councils of the Public Interest Registry (stewards of the .ORG domain), the Centre for Protecting Women Online at the Open University (UK), the Brave Movement, and The Gratitude Network. She is a 2019 Reagan Fascell Fellow, 2018 Yale World Fellow, and 2017 Chevening Gurukul Fellow. She has completed executive leadership programs at Stanford, Harvard, INSEAD, the Duke of Edinburgh’s Commonwealth Leadership Program, and the U.S. State Department’s Fortune Mentoring Program. She is also a Rotary Peace Fellow, Aspen New Voices Fellow, Vital Voices Fellow, and a BMW Foundation Responsible Leader.
Sub-specialties:
Gender
Gender Based Violence
Crowdmap
Crowdsourced data
Sexual harassment at the workplace
Women friendly cities
The creation of gender-segregated spaces to ensure women’s safety does not address the root causes of violence.
In Rural Tamil Nadu, Child Marriage Was Already Rampant. Then Came the Pandemic.
