Ms Crystal Bitutu Isanda
IAS Residential Fellow
EDSAFE AI Alliance & SafeSignKe
Crystal Isanda is a Kenyan AI governance researcher, governance designer, and public intellectual whose work centres on making the systems that govern children visible to the communities they affect. She is the founder of SafeSignKe, a consent infrastructure project developing Data Rights Cards — colour-coded, bilingual governance tools delivered via WhatsApp, that translate EdTech privacy policies into plain-language consent, context, and consequence information for guardians, teachers, and students in Kenyan schools.
As a UNICEF Innocenti Youth Foresight Fellow (2025), Crystal led participatory foresight workshops with 43 Kenyan youth, producing published findings on what students need to navigate and govern AI-integrated futures. Her work appears in Young Visionaries: Child Rights Youth Foresight Report on Education 2025 (UNICEF Innocenti) and in a forthcoming Bloomsbury Academic volume on student support systems in the Global South.
Her governance practice has received international recognition, including a Judge's Choice Award at the EdTechnical AIEd Forecasting Competition (2026) for The Confidence Paradox, a paper on AI governance frameworks in African education, and the Rising Star (Most Promising) Alumni Award at Strathmore University (2025).
A 2026 Women in AI Fellow of the EDSAFE AI Alliance and keynote speaker at Encode AI Safety Week 2026, Crystal has carried field evidence from Kenyan classrooms to policy and academic audiences across continents, including panels at the Gendering AI Conference and the Leading Minds Conference, Dubai (2025). She is also a contributor to a 2026 UNICEF Innocenti Working Paper on realising children's best interests in digital environments. She is based in Nairobi, Kenya.
During their IAS Fellowship, Ms Isanda will be collaborating with Dr Marianna Coulentianos from the School of Design and Creative Arts.