KIRRA PENDERGAST
Online Safety Strategist.
Keynote Speaker.
Advisor.
Writer. Podcaster.
Online Impact Economist.
With a decades-long career in cybersecurity and IT governance, Kirra has been advising high-risk organisations on how to protect their most critical assets since long before “online safety” became a buzzword. She understands the architecture of digital threat—not just the technology, but the human behaviour behind it. Her background includes consulting on pioneersing cyber security transformations since the mid 90's, managing cyber incidents, and navigating the complex legal and ethical terrain of online harm.
She has trained and advised over 1,200 organisations across five continents governments, global corporations, courts, classrooms, educators, parents and small business owners and everyone in between.
Her work is trusted where the stakes are real. Where people, not platforms, need protecting.
Kirra speaks in rooms where others tread carefully: international courtrooms as an expert witness, law enforcement briefings, parliamentary inquiries, closed-door corporate retreats, and summit stages shared with world leaders. Her advisory services dismantle illusion. She exposes the burnout hiding behind polished LinkedIn bios. The coercion that hides inside “consent.” The slow erosion of digital integrity that no mindfulness app can fix.
But her work isn’t just professional. It’s personal.
In 2013, Kirra was targeted in one of the most calculated digital campaigns you’ve never heard of. The person who tried to break her wasn’t a stranger. It was someone she once trusted. Someone who took everything she had taught them and used it to tear her apart. They impersonated her, stalked her online, created fake accounts to bully themselves and pointed the finger at her. They defamed her. Gaslit her. Isolated her. Until one night, at 43 years old, she reviewed her life insurance policy and made a quiet plan to leave. The only thing that stopped her was a message from her teenage son: “Mum, what’s for dinner?”
That sentence brought her home. But she was not the same. Because if it could happen to her—an expert—what would it do to a child?
From that reckoning came Safe on Social, which became one of the world’s most respected digital safety education agencies. No jargon. No corporate spin. Just clarity, delivered in language that cuts through. Kirra turned personal devastation into international infrastructure. Her work doesn’t just inform. It interrupts.
She is also the founder of CTRL+SHFT, a bold alliance with Maggie Dent, Dr Brad Marshall, and Madeleine West. Together, they formed a coalition to build systems of care for a generation left to fend for themselves online doing what governments and tech giants should have done decades ago.
Kirra lives in Florence. Works globally. Writes without permission. Speaks without dilution. She does not sell fear of digital spaces. She exposes it for what it is and builds the education and governance tools to dismantle it.