Our Spring 2024 series in Career Paths in Responsible Tech is designed to convene experts in industry, academia, and government to explore potential post-graduation career options in responsible tech and AI ethics. Each event will feature a speaker panel, followed by a small group networking session and dinner.

The Civil Society and Government Panel will be held in 45-322 on April 23 from 3:30pm-5:30pm. Please register here.

Schedule

Time Program
3:30-3:40 PM Introduction and welcome
3:40-4:40 PM Panel discussion and Q&A
4:40-5:30 PM Networking session with speakers and dinner

Civil Society and Government Panel Speakers

Kathy Pham, VP of AI&ML, Workday

... Kathy Pham is a computer scientist and product leader with experience across industry, academia, non-profits, venture capital, and government. She is Vice President of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning at Workday, and serves as the first Workday AI Ambassador. Previously, Kathy was appointed the inaugural Executive Director of the National AI Advisory Committee, led as the Deputy Chief Technologist at the Federal Trade Commission, and was a founding Engineering and Product member of the U.S. Digital Service at the White House where she helped build critical digital services in government across three presidential administrations. She is a Senior Advisor at Mozilla where she co-founded the Mozilla Builders Incubator and Mozilla Responsible Computing. She is on Faculty at Harvard where she created and teaches Product Management and Society and co-founded the Ethical Tech Working Group. She was a Fellow at the MIT Media Lab and Harvard Ethics and Governance of Artificial Intelligence Initiative. She also serves on various technology and non-profit boards. Kathy has spent over a decade building large-scale systems in industry and healthcare at Google (Search, Health, People Operations), IBM, and Harris Healthcare. Kathy completed her undergraduate and graduate studies in Computer Science at the Georgia Institute of Technology (Atlanta, Georgia) and Supelec in (Metz, France)


Theodora Skeadas, CEO of Tech Policy Consulting

... Theodora (Theo) Skeadas is the CEO of Tech Policy Consulting. In this role, she has consulted with a range of organizations like Humane Intelligence, Microsoft, Domelabs AI, National Democratic Institute, Partnership on AI, YouTube, and even the Oversight Board on elections in Greece. She is also an advisor with All Tech is Human and was recently a fellow with Integrity Institute and the Aspen Institute Tech Policy Hub, she is the part-time Executive Director of Cambridge Local First, a nonprofit that supports local businesses. Previously at Twitter, she managed the Trust and Safety Council, a research hub within the Public Policy team, and a trusted flaggers program for human rights defenders. She also actively supported Twitter's global civic integrity, transparency, and crisis response efforts. Before, she worked in national security at Booz Allen Hamilton, examining public sentiment, social movements, and disinformation using social media for the U.S. Federal Government. Previously, she worked with nonprofits in Morocco (Search for Common Ground, Innovations for Poverty Action, Sidi Moumen Cultural Center, and Sister Cities International - Africa), Turkey (Fulbright), Greece (Center for Hellenic Studies), and Costa Rica (World Teach). She has an MPP from the Harvard Kennedy School and a BA from Harvard College. She has language experience in French, Modern Greek, Modern Standard Arabic, Modern Turkish, Moroccan Arabic, and Spanish.


### Carlos Centeno, Associate Director of Innovation, MIT GOV/LAB

... Carlos is an Affiliate Researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Governance Lab [GOV/LAB], where he works at the convergence of engineering design, technology, and political behavioral science to co-develop tech-enabled governance solutions with both governments and non-governmental partners. Previously, he founded and led the MIT GOV/LAB Governance Innovation Initiative as Associate Director of Innovation (2021-2024). He's a Collaborator at MIT’s Civic Data Design Lab, where he supports research that is making data responsive to constituents’ needs. Previously, Carlos worked at MIT Solve, an initiative of the President of MIT to solve the world’s greatest challenges through technology. At Solve, Carlos engaged leading voices from academia, the private and public sectors, as well as nonprofit organizations to magnify the impact of social impact entrepreneurs. Prior to joining Solve, Carlos worked for the United Nations World Food Programme, redesigning humanitarian interventions through a data and community-first approach, in refugee camps, tribal areas, and other complex environments in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. At his last post with WFP, he served as Asia Regional Resilience Officer, where his AI-powered humanitarian response prototype, ALIA, was a 2019 finalist at WFP’s Innovation Accelerator Google Launchpad and one of the first to experiment with Natural Language Processing in the humanitarian sector. Carlos was a startup coach at MIT’s IDE Inclusive Innovation Challenge (IIC), an MIT online Bootcamps summer 2018 finalist, and a 2009-2011 CHC Congressman Leland Fellow. Outside of academia, Carlos co-founded Republica do Sur, a south american arts collective that highlights literature and poetry through urban design objects grounded in civic activism aesthetics.


### Sebastian Olascoaga, Evaluation and Research Lead, City of Boston

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