The following article was published by Project Safe, June 2025, in their monthly newsletter. Project Safe is a 501c3 nonprofit organization working to end domestic violence through crisis intervention, ongoing supportive services, systems change advocacy, and prevention and education. 
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In December of 2012, Project Safe established its first Breaking Silence Teen Textline in an effort to communicate with teens the way they’re most comfortable. By 2015, the original textline mode of operation was overwhelmed. We needed a new way of doing things that let us transfer text conversations between phones and locations and was able to track which operator had answered which message while maintaining the message history of each individual user. It was a daunting task, to create a software that, up until this point, didn’t exist in any meaningful form.

Enter Jeremy Johnson, who is currently the assistant director of research engineering, in the Institute for People and Technology (IPaT) at Georgia Tech. IPaT is a research institute at Georgia Tech, and notable in that it’s the only part of the university that explicitly includes “people” in its name and mission. They research how people interact with and experience technology, and work to make that experience better for the users. Margaret Wagner-Dahl, a Project Safe board member at the time, connected Project Safe with Jeremy for help with the obstacles the text line was facing, and a 10-year partnership was born!

Raised in McDonough, Jeremy began his time at Georgia Tech in 1994 and simply never left! He went to work for the school immediately after earning his B.S and went on to earn his Master’s in Computer Science while continuing his work. He recently stepped into a new role at IPaT as the Assistant Director of Research Engineering, where he leads the Institute’s engineering team. Throughout his career at GT he's worked on a diverse range of projects, with helping people as a common theme. These have included a panic-button system for social workers facing dangerous situations, assistive technologies for people with communications impairments, brain-computer interfaces for individuals with locked-in syndromes like ALS, mobile apps to support people in early stages of dementia and their caregivers among others. Currently he's part of a research initiative that aims to use AI to help aging adults remain in their homes longer. Jeremy is a father to two daughters and a partner to Rebecca. His strong relationship with his daughters and his partner cemented his passion for Project Safe’s mission as he saw the necessity of organizations like ours if one of his daughters ever found herself in a dangerous relationship

With the modest initial costs of creating this technology covered by gifts from Project Safe donors, Jeremy got to work creating Safeline. The initial version of the software was still phone-based, and used unique numbers and forwarding technology to distribute messages and assign conversations to operators. It was a game-changer! With logistical challenges removed, operators could just sign in and get straight to work with the messaging history available to them for each conversation they took over! Before long, a student group led by graduate student Erica Pramer built a browser-based version which added more functionality and customization options and became the primary method of communication for text line operators. Once the class project was complete, Jeremy took over the responsibility of maintaining and updating the software on a volunteer basis, and has continued that work for nearly 10 years.

Since 2016 when Safeline was introduced, Project Safe operators have held 2,069 conversations with teens experiencing dating violence using Jeremy’s technology. But, the time has come to pass the torch. In the years since Safeline was first created, texting software has become more or less ubiquitous, and the job of maintaining the software has become more onerous. Earlier this year, Project Safe began the transition to a new service, and Jeremy’s time of maintaining the textline is coming to an end. He calls it “the end of an era” and “bittersweet” to be handing over the reins after such a long time, but acknowledges that commercially available software will be easier to maintain and, with his increasing responsibilities, give him more time for his family and relationship.

Project Safe and the entire state of Georgia owe Jeremy a debt of gratitude! Without his tireless work, the Breaking Silence textline could not have handled the volume of texts it receives as the state’s only Teen Dating Violence Text Line. The countless hours fixing bugs, updating software, and responding to problems have directly helped those 2,069 young people who have used the text line access vital support and services. Thank you Jeremy for your tireless work and unwavering dedication to helping us work towards the vision of EVERYONE being safe in their homes and in their relationships!