Adrien B. Diarra has spent almost two decades advising on information security, trust and safety, and product privacy across large scale, AI-driven ecosystems. He has led strategic advisory work at Meta and previously shaped technology risk at Goldman Sachs. That résumé would be impressive on its own, yet Diarra’s most urgent focus is on the internet’s most underserved audience: children and pre-teens learning to navigate digital life. “We are trying to secure a youth-driven internet without truly involving the youth.”
Across Europe and the US, regulatory initiatives are gaining pace, with age-appropriate design standards and parental control tools giving families more levers. Diarra argues those levers, while helpful, cannot shoulder the entire burden. “App builds with age in mind and controls designed with parents are not enough,” he says. The gap is not only technical. It is cultural, emotional, and educational, which is why he believes leaders need to move from compliance checklists to experiences that kids want to engage with.
From Policy to Participation
Diarra’s operating principle is to involve the actual stakeholders. That means listening to young people and turning safety from a background setting into a frontline habit. “We need a third way,” he explains, “one that empowers young people and their parents. Not with lectures, not with restrictions, but with a tool that speaks their language.”
The executive’s framing is deliberately people-first. He has advised C-suites through shifting threat landscapes, misinformation surges, and the rapid rise of generative AI. In each case, he treats trust as a product feature rather than a policy appendix. For him, the question is not whether new rules are emerging, but how product leaders translate them into intuitive choices for families. The ideal outcome is a product that makes safe behavior the easy behavior.
CyberPals: Storytelling That Teaches Skills
That philosophy comes to life in CyberPals, a Gen-AI-driven 3D animated series authored by Diarra and built to “turn youth into digital defenders.” Each episode follows a diverse cast of young heroes traveling from Lagos to Lisbon to Tokyo as they face credible, contemporary risks: social engineering, deepfakes, cyberbullying, identity theft, and scams that mirror what kids actually see in their feeds. The narrative design matters. Diarra is adamant that the series should feel like entertainment first, instruction second. “You do not have to be tech experts to stay safe,” he says. “You just need the right mindset and the right guidance.”
Where many programs end at the screen, CyberPals extends into classrooms and living rooms. Diarra’s team equips schools, parents, and educators with ai-driven personal tutoring plans, activity kits, and discussion prompts to help the stories stick offline. The aim is durable skill building, not a one-off assembly. “This is not about creating fear,” Diarra explains, “it is about building resilience.” That choice of words is intentional. Resilience reframes online safety from a defensive crouch into a confident, repeatable practice.
What Leaders Can Learn From a Youth-First Approach
For executives, CyberPals offers a template for designing safer ecosystems without sacrificing growth or creativity. The series meets youth where they are, uses storytelling that resonates across cultures, and anchors each safety theme to a concrete behavior change. It also shows how AI can serve as a positive force when paired with thoughtful guardrails. Boards and product leaders can borrow three moves from Diarra’s approach at CyberPals: treat safety as a core user journey, invest in co-creation with communities, and translate complex risks into plain language actions.
There is commercial logic here as well. Brands that help families navigate risk earn trust that no marketing campaign can buy. His background in trust and safety has taught him that the best mitigation often happens upstream, at the moment of design. Put differently, resilient users reduce downstream incidents, regulatory friction, and reputational harm. That is why he talks about curiosity, confidence, and community as the new metrics that matter, right alongside engagement and retention.
A Shared Mandate for the Next Generation
“The future of online trust does not belong to regulators or platforms alone,” he says. “It belongs to those growing up inside.” CyberPals is his invitation to bring those voices to the center. By giving kids and parents a shared language and a set of engaging tools, he believes we can raise not only safe users but “smart, empathetic, and empowered digital citizens.”
If we want a generation that treats the internet less like a minefield and more like a civic commons, it will need models that feel as creative as the technologies they aim to regulate. Diarra’s work stands out because it speaks to both sides of the equation: the strategic demands of leaders running complex, AI-enabled platforms and the everyday needs of families who simply want to explore, learn, and connect without undue risk. That is a mandate worth rallying around.
Connect with Adrien Diarra on LinkedIn to learn more about his work to make the Internet a safer place.
