Joon Baek

Joon Baek is a South Korean privacy advocate and software engineer.

He founded Youth for Privacy, a youth-led nonprofit organization that describes itself as campaigning for online privacy rights.

In 2025, he was selected for the Forbes 30 Under 30 list. He is also a Schwarzman Scholar.

Early life and education

Baek was born in Seoul, South Korea. In 2015, he began his studies at Columbia College, then returned to South Korea for two years of mandatory military service.

After returning to Columbia in 2018, he became the Columbia College Student Council's international students representative and later its president.

He graduated in 2021 with a Bachelor of Arts in computer science and physics, and received a master's degree in computer science at Columbia.

Career

Baek works as a software engineer at Google, contributing to the creation of the ShieldGemma 2 model at DeepMind.

In 2022, he and Zino Haro, a computer science student at Columbia University, launched Youth for Privacy.

He was a 2024 Sarajevo Fellow of Humanity in Action, a 2025 Design and Technology Fellow of the Fellowships at Auschwitz for the Study of Professional Ethics, and a Prosperity Fellow of Our Future Agenda.