Stacy Gildenston
Systems Architect · Polymath · Governance Practitioner
Stacy Gildenston is a systems architect and governance practitioner with three decades of experience designing, teaching, and standardising complex technical systems in safety-critical contexts where downstream failure carries technical, social, ecological, or intergenerational consequences.
She was engaged as the instructional systems engineer for the GE AC6000 diesel engine locomotive advanced electrical maintenance course, translating safety-critical industrial systems into structured, auditable instructional architecture. She later designed and developed the first online training portal for semiconductor equipment manufacturer Semitool, and led company-wide technical training for Greenwich Tech Partners, a New York-based firm serving finance-sector clients.
Stacy served as Director of Certification for the Linux Professional Institute, SAGE / USENIX, and Cabletron Systems, overseeing competency frameworks, assessment integrity, and professional standards in high-stakes technical environments.
Her aerospace and education work includes founding Melbourne Combat Robotics, initiating and supporting multiple university-level rocketry teams, serving as Vice President of the Melbourne Amateur Rocket Society, and running the F1 Grand Prix rocketry display for the Australian Defence Force, emphasising hands-on systems understanding, aerospace literacy, and public engagement with complex technical domains.
A Master Naturalist and Watershed Steward through the University of Arizona, she initiated climate and governance work with the Hopi and Navajo Nations in collaboration with the Grand Canyon Trust. She is a 2003 World Summit on the Information Society Award recipient.
Stacy is the co-creator of the Upstream Safety System (USS™), a deterministic, auditable governance architecture designed to embed safety, dignity, agency, and accountability upstream, before harm occurs. Her work focuses on making safety-critical systems legible, auditable, and governable at scale.
Stacy and her daughter Pyrate founded the first and only teen board at the UN, the Dynamic Teen Coalition.
Pyrate Ruby Passell
Lead Developer · Prodigy · Systems Pioneer
At 17, Pyrate Ruby Passell is the co-originator of the Upstream Safety System™ (USS™), responsible for developing, implementing, and black-box testing all technical components of the USS™ demo, translating governance theory into a working, auditable system.
As Co-Founder of the Dynamic Teen Coalition, Pyrate was invited to, participated in, and endorsed the UN Global Digital Compact at 14, contributing to consultations on emerging technologies, inclusion, and governance design.
She was selected as a mentor through the International Telecommunication Union for the UN's first Citiverse Challenge, supporting university teams working at the intersection of virtual worlds, governance, and emerging technology.
Pyrate has been recognised by the UN Foundation as its first Changemaker under the age of 18, and as a Friend of the Open Quantum Institute at CERN, for contributions to discussions and workstreams connecting quantum technologies, governance, and the Global Digital Compact.
In 2014, she won the Australian Youth Rocketry Challenge, marking an early national-level engineering achievement that foreshadowed her later systems work.
She served and hosted events as a member of the National Gallery of Victoria Teen Board in 2023.
She built and operated the first digital governance Discord servers used at the United Nations, establishing the operational governance model for the Dynamic Teen Coalition in 2023–2024, extending that framework to the ITU Citiverse Challenge in 2025, and shaping collaboration architectures later adopted within the UN Foundation's Our Future Agenda.
Her work sits at the boundary where governance theory becomes executable system design, turning principles such as dignity, agency, and human authority into architectures that can be built, tested, and defended under real-world conditions.
Pyrate and her mother Stacy founded the first and only teen board at the UN, the Dynamic Teen Coalition.