Paris Davis — Founder and CEO, CodedChange

Paris Davis is a systems innovator, research practitioner, and national advocate for community-rooted public safety transformation. His work is informed by more than a decade of frontline and program leadership experience within the Community Violence Intervention (CVI) ecosystem, supporting survivors of violence, facilitating crisis response, mentoring youth, and coordinating care for community members navigating trauma, instability, and structural inequities.

Raised in Oakland, California, Paris’ trajectory is shaped by communities deeply affected by generational disinvestment, systemic racism, and community violence. His lived experience in Oakland, combined with years of direct work with individuals affected by violence, helped him understand how structural inequities shape both community safety and practitioner vulnerability. He saw firsthand how violence interrupters, case managers, youth workers, outreach specialists, unhoused teams, crisis responders, and school-based practitioners shoulder high-stakes relational labor while operating with limited systemic safeguards.

From these experiences, Paris learned a foundational truth:
The practitioners who sustain community safety are the least resourced, least safeguarded, and least recognized across the public safety landscape.

Throughout his career, he observed colleagues navigating volatile, high-risk situations without real-time safety tools, coordinated communication systems, or organizational infrastructures designed to ensure their well-being. As national investment in CVI expanded, Paris identified a persistent systemic gap. Despite practitioner-centered work being central to community safety, the technological and operational systems surrounding that work remained fragmented, outdated, and insufficient.

More importantly, no technology ecosystem existed that was specifically designed for practitioners whose work is the most relational, human-centered, and risk-exposed. Existing tools were built for law enforcement, EMS, or corporate teams, not for CVI or the broader social service workforce.

This absence was not merely a technical oversight.
It was a systemic injustice. CodedChange was created to close that gap.

In response, Paris founded CodedChange, a Black-led national organization dedicated to developing the nation’s first community-centered public safety infrastructure. Grounded in lived experience, practitioner expertise, and responsible innovation, CodedChange challenges long-standing assumptions about who public safety systems are designed to serve and who they exclude.

Through a trauma-informed, culturally grounded, and academically informed design process, Paris developed Motion Link, the first AI-enabled safety platform tailored to frontline practitioners across CVI, social services, healthcare, education, unhoused teams, and crisis intervention. Motion Link operationalizes a central principle of Paris’ work:
Those who safeguard our communities deserve protective systems that safeguard them in return.

Paris now leads CodedChange at the intersection of community wisdom, technological innovation, and healing-centered practice. His work advances a reimagined model of public safety infrastructure that prioritizes frontline protection, practitioner dignity, and community-defined solutions. He collaborates nationally with cities, practitioners, and research partners to develop systems that reflect the brilliance, resilience, and expertise of the communities that shaped him.