Tech Veterans Anne Bertucio and Vinay Rao Join ROOST

At ROOST , our mission to build open, scalable, and resilient technology for the public good is only possible with the right people at the helm. We’re thrilled to announce that Anne Bertucio , former Head of the Open Source Programs Office at Google, and Vinay Rao , previously Head of Safeguards at Anthropic, are joining our organization to help us democratize robust Trust and Safety tools through open source.

Together, Anne and Vinay embody ROOST's core belief that safety infrastructure should be transparent, collaborative, and accessible to all. Their expertise will be crucial as we continue building open source solutions that can scale across the diverse needs of the digital ecosystem.

Anne Bertucio joins ROOST with experience in both the nonprofit and corporate sides of open source, including the Open Infrastructure Foundation and Google. In recent years, she’s specialized in open source security, including supply chain security and vulnerability management initiatives, but her work has always centered on the value open source brings to sustaining and distributing critical technology.

As COO, Anne will help ROOST chart a new way for philanthropies, corporate partners, and researchers to collaboratively create public interest technology.

"Just like we need our physical spaces to be safe environments, our digital ones need to be safe as well," Anne says. "The safety of the internet isn't a nice-to-have or a feature, it's critical fundamental infrastructure for every user."

Vinay Rao brings eighteen years of hands-on experience tackling safety challenges across the technology landscape, most recently focusing on AI safety at Anthropic, covering the full range of harms — from catastrophic to agentic. His expertise spans AI, ads, content, account, offline, and payment safety risks.

At ROOST, Vinay as CTO will lead our technical vision in consultation with our partners to build open source Trust and Safety infrastructure to meet real-world needs of platforms of all sizes.

His practitioner perspective highlights the urgent need for better safety tools. "Even in established companies, safety systems have been built under the pressure of a recent or imminent risk. There is rarely much time to think deeply and design them."

With AI's rapid integration opening new threat vectors, Vinay sees ROOST's mission as particularly timely, saying "AI opens a world of possibilities to build safety solutions with, and ROOST comes at the right time with a mission to make robust safety tools universally available."

Both leaders share a fundamental belief that drives ROOST's mission: digital safety for global users requires the collaborative, transparent approach that open source enables.

"Critical, fundamental infrastructure is where open source shines," Anne says. "The success of the internet has been underpinned by open source software and development practices. Open source is the right vehicle for making Trust and Safety tooling easily accessible, effective, and part of our everyday digital experiences.”

As threats to online safety continue to evolve, so must the infrastructure that protects users. With Anne and Vinay on board, ROOST is better positioned than ever to scale its impact, support partners and accelerate its mission to make Trust and Safety infrastructure accessible to all.

"We couldn't be more excited to welcome Anne and Vinay to ROOST," said Camille François, President of ROOST. "Anne and Vinay’s decision to join ROOST is a great endorsement of our mission to build open‑source safety infrastructure the internet can trust—and of our commitment to deliver it at scale.”

“Anne's deep understanding of how to successfully scale open source initiatives in both nonprofit and enterprise environments, combined with Vinay's extensive hands-on experience solving real-world safety challenges at the highest levels, brings exactly the expertise we need as we work to democratize access to robust Trust and Safety tools,” she said. “Their combined experience will be invaluable as we build the infrastructure that will help protect our digital spaces for everyone."