“It’s been really cool to learn that I can move from intern to director at an organization that can see your leadership skills, can see your potential, and wants to invest in your growth,” said Beau Cromartie, Director of Digital Infrastructure at the Southern Vision Alliance, who has been with the organization for more than ten years. The digi team, as we love to call them at SVA, is directed by Beau and staffed by two other brilliant tech and communications experts, organizers, and educators in their own right.
So what do they do? To put it simply, they code, design, and build the websites of all of SVA’s programs and sponsored projects. A lot of the work, though, is born out of the campaigns and activities of the grassroots groups within the ecosystem. The digi team creates the event pages, action alerts, newsletters, petitions, mailings, and more for more than forty sponsored projects and multiple in-house programs.
“What I love about it – ” said Beau, “– you never know what kind of day you’ll have because the work is moved by other folks’ work.”
The team is well-versed in pivots, uprisings and responding to urgencies. They have the big picture pulse on what’s happening across the South because so much of the way we organize these days is digital.
But they are also leading a culture and movement around progressive digital infrastructure and safety. Not only does the digi team create and manage the tech, but they also provide thought leadership, education, and culture around cybersecurity, progressive values-aligned tech development, and digital safety against surveillance and attack.
Caption: Beau Cromartie, Director of Digital Infrastructure at Southern Vision Alliance, and Nada M., Digital Infrastructure Coordinator, with workshop participants at Blueprint NC & SVA Convergence gathering in November 2025.
“We prioritize technology that is open source, that is made by movement leaders and radical technologists to make sure that our data is protected,” Beau said. “It’s really important to have people who are fighting back and who can lead us in an alternative way against corporate technologies that are actively tracking us and sharing our data, destroying our ecosystems and our rights.”
They are also not just behind the scenes, these three. They prioritize people and relationships over everything else.
“I love the people,” said Beau. “It’s mostly for the people.”
They regularly go out into the field to provide technical assistance in person to members of our sponsored projects network, they hold workshops, office hours, and information sessions, and they create accessible and useful content to help orient people to the digital tools that we utilize.
Digital infrastructure is imperative to keeping the movement organized, accountable, and effective. We know that chaos is a fascist strategy that keeps people panicked, scrambling, and isolated and we are actively resisting that chaos by providing our movement ecosystem with the digital expertise, services, troubleshooting and education that our sponsored projects and internal programs need so they can focus on the grassroots organizing work and not worry about the tech that supports it.
“To see a nonprofit who is so dedicated to protecting our people and aligning with our values is rare and admirable,” said Beau.
Stay tuned for more behind the scenes of a grassroots intermediary.
