Dena Sacco

Dena T. Sacco is a Senior Researcher for the Youth Meanness and Cruelty Project, which grows out a partnership between the Berkman Center, The Born This Way Foundation (BTWF), the John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and The California Endowment.  Dena’s work for the project focuses on legal policy issues, including “An Overview of State Anti-bullying and Other Relevant Laws”.

Dena participated in the Berkman Center’s Youth and Media Policy Working Group Initiative, for which she and Harvard Law students wrote “Sexting: Legal and Practical issues”. In addition, with Professor John Palfrey and Dr. danah boyd, Dena co-directed the Internet Safety Technical Task Force, a group of Internet businesses, non-profit organizations, academics, and technology companies that joined together to identify effective tools to create a safer environment on the Internet for youth.

From 2007-2012, Dena was an Assistant Director and Clinical Instructor at Harvard Law School’s Cyberlaw Clinic, focusing on child exploitation and youth online safety issues.  She has also been a Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School, co-teaching the seminar “Child Exploitation, Pornography & the Internet” as well as teaching in the Graduate Program and in the First Year Legal Research and Writing Program.  From 1999-2005, Dena was an Assistant United States Attorney in Boston, where she had primary responsibility for child exploitation cases in the District of Massachusetts. From 1997-1999, she was a Counsel in the Office of Policy Development at the United States Department of Justice in Washington, DC. Prior to working for the federal government, Dena was an associate in the employment and labor law department of Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker in Washington, DC. Dena received her B.A., cum laude, from Yale College in 1990, her J.D., cum laude, from Harvard Law School in 1993, and an LL.M. in European Union law from the College of Europe in Bruges, Belgium in 1994.