Speakers

S. Jaishankar is the external affairs minister of India. He is a member of the Rajya Sabha (the upper house of India’s Parliament) from the state of Gujarat. Between 2015 and 2018, he was India’s foreign secretary. He was the ambassador to the United States from 2013 to 2015, ambassador to China from 2009 to 2013, high commissioner to Singapore from 2007 to 2009, and ambassador to the Czech Republic from 2000 to 2004. He has also served in other diplomatic assignments in embassies in Moscow, Colombo, Budapest, and Tokyo, as well as in the Ministry of External Affairs and the president’s secretariat. He was also the president of global corporate affairs at Tata Sons Private Limited. He graduated from St. Stephen’s College, University of Delhi. He has a master’s in political science and an MPhil and PhD in international relations from Jawaharlal Nehru University. He is the author of the widely acclaimed bestseller, The India Way: Strategies for an Uncertain World. He was awarded the Padma Shri in 2019.

Balaraman Ravindran is the founding head of the School of Data Science and AI, the Robert Bosch Centre for Data Science and AI, and the Centre for Responsible AI (CeRAI) at IIT Madras. He is the Mindtree Faculty Fellow and professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at IIT Madras. He has held visiting positions at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India; the University of Technology, Sydney, Australia; and Google Research. He has nearly three decades of experience working in reinforcement learning, and his research interests span learning on graphs and deep RL. He received his PhD from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and his master’s degree from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. He is currently serving on the editorial boards of ACM Transactions on Intelligent Systems, Machine Learning Journal, Journal of AI Research, PLOS One, and Frontiers in Big Data and AI. He has published more than 150 papers in premier journals and conferences.

Roberto de Oliveira Campos Neto has been the governor of the Central Bank of Brazil since February 2019. He has a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in economics from the University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA). He has broad professional experience in the financial sector. For over two decades, he has worked in several leadership positions in financial institutions in Brazil and abroad. His trajectory is outstood by enthusiasm for technology and innovation in the financial sector. He has also been involved in studies related to blockchain and digital assets, among other innovation aspects that have helped mold the financial system of the future. Previously, he launched the Agenda BC#, a set of structuring measures that aim to foster competition, inclusion, transparency, education, and sustainability in the national financial system.

Rajnath Singh is the defence minister of India. He is one of the senior-most political leaders of the country. He started his political career as a student activist with the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) and went on to become the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) national president. He was elected to the Uttar Pradesh Legislative Council in 1988 and became the education minister of Uttar Pradesh (UP) in 1991. In March 1997, he became the state president of the BJP’s Uttar Pradesh unit. In October 2000, he became the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state. Before that, in November 1999, he became the union minister of surface transport in Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s government. In 2003, he became the minister of agriculture in Vajpayee’s cabinet. In 2014, he became union minister of home affairs in the Narendra Modi government. He was made the defence minister of the country in 2019.

Salima Monorma Bah is the Minister of Communication, Technology and Innovation in Sierra Leone. As a cabinet minister, Ms. Bah’s mandate includes leading the government’s digital transformation agenda as well as the country’s digital economy and innovation entrepreneurship strategic development. In addition, she supervises the telecommunications sector. Ms. Bah is most passionate about the potential of technology and innovation for accelerating the growth of developing countries. Prior to her appointment, she led the design, development, and implementation of such programs as the head of project coordination at the Directorate of Science, Technology and Innovation in Sierra Leone. Ms. Bah holds a Bachelor of Law degree from the University of Wales in the United Kingdom, as well as a Master of Law from the Columbia Law School in the United States.

Meenakashi Lekhi is the minister of state for external affairs and the minister of state for culture for the Government of India. She began her career as a lawyer and has practiced in various courts, including several tribunals, the Delhi High Court, and the Supreme Court, with a particular focus on indirect taxes and criminal law. She also practiced in a range of forums across India and handled numerous issues pertaining to women in the courts, such as domestic violence, family law disputes, and most importantly, the issue of the permanent commission of lady officers in the armed forces. She is a two-time member of parliament and has been a member of numerous parliamentary committees. She has also served as the chairperson of the Committee of Privileges, the Committee on Public Undertakings, and the Joint Committee on the Personal Data Protection Bill 2019. She held the post of national vice president of the BJP Mahila Morcha in 2010.

Rajeev Chandrasekhar is the minister of state for electronics and information technology and skill development and entrepreneurship in the Government of India. He is focused on expanding and deepening India’s tech and innovation economy and developing India as a global talent and entrepreneurship hub. In this regard, he is leading several initiatives, such as the semiconductor mission for India, electronics system design and manufacturing, deep tech investment promotion, Startup India, and technology policy development. He began his entrepreneurial journey in the early 1990s, setting up one of India’s earliest mobile cellular networks, BPL Mobile, which he successfully exited to Hutchinson, now Vodafone, in 2005. A three-term parliamentarian, he started his political career as a member of parliament in 2006, campaigning for a variety of public interest and economic growth issues, as well as advocating for a rules-based, open internet, data privacy, and interoperability. Currently, he is executing the Indian government’s mission of building a trillion-dollar tech economy in India by 2025–26 and also working toward making India a global skills hub.

Rajkumar Ranjan Singh is the minister of state for external affairs and education for the Government of India. He is a postgraduate in geography and earned his PhD from Gauhati University. He served in different capacities, including as a lecturer, assistant professor, deputy registrar, and registrar. He also served as the director in-charge of the UGC academic staff college and the college development director of Manipur University. He was a senior visiting fellow in the Department of Geography at Manipur University until he joined electoral politics in 2013. He has published eight books and made numerous contributions to various national and international journals and publications. During his academic career, he also participated in several national and international consultative meetings on human resource management, security sector reforms, and the land and livelihood rights of indigenous peoples.

Amitabh Kant, a name synonymous with transformative leadership and innovation in public policy, has played a pivotal role on the global stage. As India’s Sherpa to the G20 during India’s presidency of G20 in 2022–23, he was at the forefront of navigating the challenging geopolitical waters and steering the G20 toward a consensus on a decisive and action-oriented New Delhi Leaders’ Declaration, an essential document that outlined a clear path for addressing pressing global issues. Beyond his G20 role, his illustrious career spans key senior positions in the Government of India, where he spearheaded initiatives that reshaped the nation’s economic landscape. He has served as the chief executive officer of NITI Aayog. His tenure also saw him at the helm of the Department for Industrial Policy and Promotion in India. He received the prestigious Sir Edmund Hillary Fellowship, conferred by the Prime Minister of New Zealand, and is a Chevening Scholar and an alumnus of Harvard Kennedy School. He is the author of Made in India, Incredible India 2.0, and Branding India: An Incredible Story.

Rajat Verma is the founder and CEO of LOHUM Cleantech. He has grown LOHUM into India’s largest producer of sustainable Li-ion battery raw materials through a combination of recycling, repurposing, and low-carbon refining. As of 2023, LOHUM has built a battery recycling market share of approximately 70 to 80 percent in India. In 2022, LOHUM was honored as “The Most Innovative Company of the Year” by the Confederation of Indian Industry. Rajat has multiple patents across the field of battery lifecycle management to his credit and actively represents the industry on various committees formed by the government for achieving a circular economy. As a pioneer in the electronic waste management ecosystem, he has developed several solutions across the e-waste value chain for markets across India, the United States, and the Gulf Cooperation Council. Rajat holds engineering degrees from IIT Kanpur and Stanford University, as well as an MBA from Harvard Business School.

C. Raja Mohan is a senior fellow with the Asia Society Policy Institute in New Delhi. He was the director of the Institute of South Asian Studies, National University of Singapore, where he is currently a visiting research professor. He was the professor of South Asian studies at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, and at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He is one of India’s leading commentators on India’s foreign policy. He has been associated with several think tanks, such as the Institute of Defence Studies and Analyses, the Centre for Policy Research, and the Observer Research Foundation. He was the founding director of Carnegie India and served on India’s National Security Advisory Board. Earlier, he was the strategic affairs editor for the Hindu, Chennai, and writes a regular column for Foreign Policy and the Indian Express. Among his recent books are Samudra Manthan: Sino-Indian Rivalry in the Indo-Pacific, Modi’s World: Expanding India’s Sphere of Influence, and The New Asian Geopolitics: Military Power and Regional Order.

Emran Mian is the director general for digital technologies and telecoms at the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology in the government of the United Kingdom. He is responsible for digital and tech policy, digital infrastructure, data policy, international and economic security, cyber and digital identity, and security and online harms. He has previously worked in other UK government departments, including the Department for Education and the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities.

Stefan Schnorr has been a state secretary at the German Federal Ministry for Digital and Transport since 2021. He is responsible for the central services, budget and shareholdings, digital and data policy, digital connectivity, and aviation directorates general. From 2015 to 2021, he was the director-general for digital and innovation policy at the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy, where he previously served as the director for crafts, commercial law and business promotion, education policy, and liberal professions. Before that, he was at the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Technology, where he was appointed as the director for information society and media in 2010 and went on to serve as the director for budget, staff, organization, and information technology (CIO) and IT commissioner, the director-general for political staff and policy planning, as well as the director-general for IT, communication, and postal policies. He began his career as an administrative judge in Trier, Rhineland-Palatinate.

Nitendra Rajput is the senior vice president and head of the AI Garage at Mastercard. He has twenty-five years of experience in the areas of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and mobile interactions. He has authored over a hundred publications at key international ACM and IEEE venues and has been recognized as an ACM Distinguished Scientist and a senior IEEE Member. He has also been recognized as an ACM Distinguished Speaker as well as a Top AI Leader by Analytics India Magazine. In 2021, he received the Technical Role Model in AI award at the Zinnov Awards. With over fifty granted patents to his name, he was an IBM Master Inventor and was also an IBM Academy of Technology member. Previously, he worked at IBM Research before joining InfoEdge as EVP and head of analytics. He is the co-author of Speech in Mobile and Pervasive Environments. He holds a master’s degree from IIT Bombay.

Raj Shukla was appointed to the Union Public Service Commission by the President of India in 2022. He is a former army commander with over four decades of distinguished service in the Indian Army. An aviator and accomplished public speaker, he has an abiding interest in strategic-military affairs. He has published more than sixty articles in journals and prominent newspapers, such as the Hindustan Times, the Indian Express, the Print, the Economic Times, India Today, Money Control, and Business World. He has also lectured and participated in approximately 300 talks, seminars, and events in India and abroad. He is a distinguished fellow at the Center for Land Warfare Studies and has been elected to the Executive Council of the USI.

Izumi Nakamitsu assumed her position as under-secretary-general and high representative for disarmament affairs on May 1, 2017. Prior to taking on this post, she served as assistant administrator of the Crisis Response Unit at the United Nations Development Programme since 2014. She has many years of experience within and outside the UN system, most recently as special adviser ad interim on follow-up to the Summit on Addressing Large Movements of Refugees and Migrants between 2016 and 2017. She was previously director of the Asia and the Middle East Division of the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations between 2012 and 2014 and director of the Department’s Division of Policy, Evaluation and Training from 2008 to 2012. She holds a Master of Science degree in foreign service from Georgetown University in Washington, DC, and a Bachelor of Law degree from Waseda University, Tokyo.

Isaac Ben-Israel is a retired major general. He is currently professor emeritus at Tel-Aviv University (TAU), where he is directing the Blavatnik Interdisciplinary Cyber Research Center (founded by him in 2014) and the Yuval Ne’eman Workshop for Science, Technology and Security (founded by him in 2002), as well as teaching in the Security Studies Program. From 1967 until his retirement in 2002, he served in the Israel Defence Force (IDF). In 2003, he founded RAY-TOP (Technology Opportunities) Ltd., consulting governments and industries on technological and strategic issues. He has served on multiple national committees and led the national task forces on cybersecurity and artificial intelligence policies. He was a member of Parliament (2007–2009) and chairman of the Israel Space Agency for seventeen years (2005–2022). He won the Itzhak-Sade Award for Military Literature for his book Dialogues on Science and Military Intelligence. He received the Israeli Defence Award twice during his military service.

As part of the Executive Office at UNDP, Keyzom works with governments and digital ecosystems to shape the future of development and the role of multilaterals in digital transformation. She leads digital programmes across UNDP’s network of 171 countries, catalyzing new models of collaboration to create a community of ingenious people working collectively to solve complex challenges. She collaborates on frontier areas that member states face to foster new models of global digital cooperation across the UN and the multilateral system.

John Tasioulas is professor of ethics and legal philosophy at the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Oxford, as well as the inaugural director of the Institute for Ethics in AI. He is also a senior research fellow at Balliol College, Oxford. He received degrees in philosophy and law from the University of Melbourne and studied as a Rhodes Scholar at the University of Oxford. Previously, he has held positions at University College London, the Australian National University, the University of Chicago, Harvard University, and the University of Notre Dame. He has acted as a consultant to the World Bank and is a member of the International Advisory Board, Panel for the Future of Science and Technology (STOA), European Parliament. He is currently pursuing a project for developing a humanistic ethics of AI, funded by Schmidt Futures’ AI2050 Program. 

Sabeen Dhanani currently serves as the deputy director of the Technology Division at USAID. The division is home to over sixty-five technical experts across eight technical teams, covering a wide array of topics including digital government, geospatial analysis, emerging technologies, digital inclusion, and cybersecurity. In her role, Sabeen provides strategic direction and supports the overall management of the division’s activities to align with the USAID Digital Strategy and U.S. government priorities. Additionally, Sabeen represents USAID’s intergovernmental and external forums to promote the growth of open, secure, and inclusive digital ecosystems around the world.

Marcus Bartley Johns is senior director, Asia, for government and regulatory affairs at Microsoft. He works with Microsoft’s teams and the company’s stakeholders across the region to advance public policy and regulation for trusted, responsible, and inclusive digital transformation. This encompasses a wide range of issues at the intersection of technology and society, such as the responsible use of artificial intelligence, privacy and data protection, and the digital transformation of industries like financial services. Before joining Microsoft, Marcus worked for the World Bank on digital economy and trade projects with governments, based in Singapore and Geneva. He also co-led teams that produced World Bank flagship reports on the digital economy in Southeast Asia and on global trade and poverty. Marcus began his career as an Australian diplomat, with assignments in Geneva at the World Trade Organization and the United Nations and in Bangkok, where he worked on regional economic cooperation programs.

Ashley J. Tellis is the Tata Chair for Strategic Affairs and a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, specializing in international security and U.S. foreign and defense policy with a special focus on Asia and the Indian subcontinent. He is a counselor at the National Bureau of Asian Research and the research director of its Strategic Asia program, in addition to serving as an adviser to the chief of naval operations. While on assignment to the U.S. Department of State as senior adviser to the undersecretary of state for political affairs, he was intimately involved in negotiating the civil nuclear agreement with India. Prior to his government service, Tellis was a senior policy analyst at the RAND Corporation and a professor of policy analysis at the RAND Graduate School. He is the co-author of Grasping Greatness: Making India a Leading Power and has authored and contributed to several other publications. He holds an MA and a PhD in political science from the University of Chicago.

Shalini Kapoor is the head of public sector and chief technologist for AWS India. She leads the public sector team at AWS India and South Asia, where she helps government agencies, public sector undertakings, educational institutions, and healthcare and nonprofit organizations adopt AWS Cloud services. As a trusted strategic advisor, she provides thought leadership for transformational initiatives and drives citizen-scale platforms. She is a prolific speaker at tech conferences and a strategic advisor to several industry and policy bodies. She has twenty-six years of industry experience and was an IBM Fellow prior to joining AWS. She is the author of AI for You: The New Game Changer. She is passionate about women in STEM, tech-enabled societal reforms, and academia.

Aubra Anthony is a senior fellow in the Technology and International Affairs Program at Carnegie, where she researches the human impacts of digital technology, specifically in emerging markets. Prior to joining Carnegie, Aubra worked at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) as strategy and research lead in the Innovation, Technology, and Research Hub. Aubra has been invited to speak and write on issues of inclusion and ethics in the context of AI and other emerging technologies in international development at various domestic and international forums. She currently serves on the AI for the Planet Advisory Board and the Expert Advisory Committee for the Global Index on Responsible AI. Before joining the federal government, Aubra was a Hatfield Scholar with the Center for Democracy and Technology. She received her PhD in physics from the University of Texas at Austin and was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Colorado.

Arun Subramaniyan leads the cloud and AI strategy team at Intel. He is responsible for establishing and driving the overall AI strategy globally and is focused on democratizing AI in a sustainable fashion. Arun is a prolific researcher and has a PhD in aerospace engineering from Purdue University with a specialization in nanocomposites and nanomechanics. He has nineteen granted patents (fifty-four filed) and more than fifty international publications that have been cited more than 1,000 times with an h-index of fifteen. Arun joined Intel from Amazon Web Services, where he led the extreme-scale computing team, spanning machine learning, quantum computing, high-performance computing, autonomous vehicles, and autonomous computing. Before AWS, Arun founded and led the AI products team at GE’s Oil & Gas Division and grew the digital products business successfully. He is also a recipient of the Hull Award from GE, which honors technologists for their outstanding technical impact.

Aditi Jha is director and country head, legal and government affairs, and a member of the leadership team at LinkedIn India. In her role, she leads the legal and government relations function and works with LinkedIn’s data scientists and economists to leverage data from LinkedIn’s Economic Graph to shape and inform skills and workforce development policies. Aditi has earned her LLM from Stanford Law School, USA.

Abhishek Singh is a career civil servant with twenty-eight years of experience in governance and policy formulation. He specializes in the use of technology for improving governance. He is an additional secretary in the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, Government of India, with the additional charge of president and CEO of the National e-Governance Division as well as the MD and CEO of Digital India Corporation. He leads major Digital India initiatives, including projects in the fields of artificial intelligence and emerging technologies. He has also been assigned the additional charge of CEO of Karmayogi Bharat, a government company under the Department of Personnel & Training, tasked with building a tech platform for the capacity building of all civil servants. He has a master’s in public administration from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. He is also an alumnus of IIT Kanpur.

Audrey Plonk is head of the Digital Economy Policy (DEP) Division of the Directorate for Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) at the OECD. She is responsible for implementing the work of two committees: the Committee on Digital Economy Policy (CDEP) and the Committee for Consumer Policy (CCP). She is also responsible for the management of STI’s Digital Economy Division. Previously, Ms. Plonk was senior director for global security policy at Intel Corporation, where she was also a senior director for public policy. In 2009, she joined the board of The Privacy Projects and later took over the chairmanship of the not-for-profit organization. She has been a guest lecturer at the University of California Berkeley’s School of Information and has taught cyber policy courses at the U.S. Technology Training Institute. She holds a bachelor’s degree in international affairs from George Washington University, USA.

T. Koshy is the managing director and chief executive officer of the Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC). He was a part of the founding team of the National Security Depository Limited and served as an executive director. He also worked at Ernst & Young, where he led key digital transformation initiatives. A pioneer in digital ID, social protection, and e-government initiatives, he has played a leadership role in several implementations and consulting projects. Among others, these include the unique ID project, the expenditure information network, Project PLATINUM for the development of a legal and IT framework for the Ministry of Urban Development’s guaranteed land title, the common data repository for the insurance sector, the e-stamping initiative, and the automation of VAT functions in a few Indian states. He has served as a member of committees constituted by the SEBI and the RBI and assisted the World Bank with pension transformation projects. He is an alumnus of IIM Bangalore.

Evelyn Miller is a vice president in privacy policy, overseeing the Data and Privacy Regulation as well as the Proactive Initiatives Team. Her team focuses on aligning global regulatory initiatives and ensuring the safe and responsible use of data to promote innovation. Previously, she was the head of legal affairs of National Geographic Partners, LLC, a division of the Walt Disney Company. In this capacity, she partnered closely with Disney’s leadership and legal affairs teams, served as principal liaison to the National Geographic Society, and oversaw the NG television, magazine, and technology businesses. During her legal career, she has also served as an associate general counsel at AddThis, a technology startup, senior digital and technology counsel at Viacom Media Networks, and corporate associate at Arnold Porter Kaye Scholer. She received a bachelor’s degree from Harvard University and a JD from Northwestern University School of Law.

Dan Baer is senior vice president for policy research and director of the Europe Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He was a diplomatic fellow at the University of Denver’s Josef Korbel School of International Studies from 2017 to 2019. He served in former governor John Hickenlooper’s cabinet as executive director of the Colorado Department of Higher Education from 2018 to 2019. Under President Obama, he was U.S. ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) from 2013 to 2017. Previously, he was a deputy assistant secretary of state for the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor from 2009 to 2013. Dan is the author of the recent Simon & Schuster book, The Four Tests: What It Will Take to Keep America Strong and Good.

Dushni Weerakoon is the executive director of the Institute of Policy Studies of Sri Lanka and head of its macroeconomic policy research. Her research and publications cover areas related to macroeconomic policy, regional trade integration, and international economics. She has extensive experience working in an advisory capacity for the Government of Sri Lanka (GOSL), including as an appointed member to the Monetary Board of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka and a director on the Board of Investment of Sri Lanka. She currently serves on a GOSL Committee to Formulate a Strategy for Artificial Intelligence for Sri Lanka 2023–2028. She holds a BSc in economics with first-class honors from the Queen’s University of Belfast, UK, and an MA and PhD in economics from the University of Manchester, UK.

Vukosi Marivate is an associate professor of computer science and holds the ABSA UP Chair of Data Science at the University of Pretoria. He specializes in developing machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) methods to extract insights from data, with a particular focus on the intersection of ML/AI and natural language processing (NLP). His research is dedicated to improving the methods, tools, and availability of data for local or low-resource languages. As the leader of the Data Science for Social Impact research group in the computer science department, he is interested in using data science to solve social challenges. He has worked on projects related to science, energy, public safety, and utilities, among others. He is a co-founder and chief technology officer for Lelapa AI, as well as a co-founder of the Deep Learning Indaba. He is also a chief investigator on the Masakhane NLP project, which aims to develop NLP technologies for African languages.

Elina Noor is a senior fellow in the Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where she focuses on the implications of technology for reshaping power dynamics, governance, and nation-building in Southeast Asia. She also serves on the ICRC’s Global Advisory Board on digital threats during conflict. Previously, Elina was the director of political-security affairs and deputy director at the Asia Society Policy Institute, Washington, DC. She has also been an associate professor at the Daniel K. Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies, Honolulu. She also served as the director of foreign policy and security studies at the Institute of Strategic and International Studies Malaysia. Elina read law at Oxford University. She obtained an LLM (Public International Law) from the London School of Economics and Political Science. A recipient of the Perdana (Malaysian Prime Minister’s) Fellowship, she holds an MA in security studies from Georgetown University, where she was a Women in International Security Scholar.

Evan A. Feigenbaum is vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He was also the 2019–20 James R. Schlesinger Distinguished Professor at the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia, where he is now a practitioner senior fellow. Initially an academic with a PhD in Chinese politics from Stanford University, his career has spanned government service, think tanks, the private sector, and three regions of Asia. He has previously served at the U.S. State Department as deputy assistant secretary of state for South Asia, deputy assistant secretary of state for Central Asia, member of the policy planning staff with principal responsibility for East Asia and the Pacific, and an adviser on China to Deputy Secretary of State Robert B. Zoellick. He is the author of three books and monographs, including China’s Techno-Warriors: National Security and Strategic Competition from the Nuclear to the Information Age (2003), as well as numerous articles and essays.

George Perkovich is the Ken Olivier and Angela Nomellini Chair and vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where he oversees the Technology and International Affairs and Nuclear Policy Programs. He works primarily on nuclear strategy and nonproliferation issues, cyberconflict, and new approaches to international public-private management of strategic technologies. He is the author of the prize-winning book India’s Nuclear Bomb (1999) and the co-author of Not War, Not Peace? Motivating Pakistan to Prevent Cross-Border Terrorism (2016). Perkovich has advised many agencies of the U.S. government and testified before both houses of Congress. He has been a member of the National Academy of Science’s Committee on Arms Control and International Security, the Council on Foreign Relations Task Force on Nuclear Policy, and was a principal adviser to the International Commission on Nuclear Nonproliferation and Disarmament, a joint initiative of the governments of Japan and Australia.

Ms. Immaculate Kassait, MBS, is Kenya’s first data commissioner. She has twelve years of experience working in the public sector, managing complex projects in governance, training, compliance, and strategy. She was the chair of the taskforce that developed the three sets of regulations that operationalized Kenya’s Data Protection Act of 2019. Ms. Kassait serves as the first vice chair of the board of the Network of African Data Protection Authorities and as an editorial board member of the Global Privacy Law Review. She is an advocate of the High Court of Kenya with fourteen years of standing and a Building Resources in Democracy, Governance and Elections (BRIDGE) facilitator. In 2017, she was awarded the Moran of the Burning Spear (MBS) presidential award for her outstanding work in public service. Ms. Kassait holds a master’s degree in business administration as well as a postgraduate diploma and an undergraduate degree in law.

Dr. Jane Munga is a digital policy expert and a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Jane leads the work on technology policy in the Africa program. Her research focuses on digital development, digital economy regulations, and digital inclusivity in African countries. Jane’s career has focused on policymaking, emphasizing the potential of digital technologies for digital transformation. Jane has previously worked for the Government of Kenya as an advisor in the Ministry of ICT Innovation and Youth Affairs, Ministry of Education, and Ministry of Interior. She also served as an economic expert at the National Communications Secretariat, an ICT policy advisory body for the Government of Kenya. In this capacity, she focused on developing digital economy policies and regulations, which included designing digital transformation programs for the Government of Kenya. Jane holds a PhD in political science and government and master’s degrees in economics and management from the University of Alabama.

Kanwaljit Singh leads the digital public infrastructure (DPI) team’s efforts in the areas of digital identity, cybersecurity, and applications of emerging technologies to accelerate development outcomes. Kanwal graduated from Cornell University with a PhD in physical organic chemistry and joined the Components Research division at Intel Corporation, where he led teams tasked with investigating advanced technologies in materials science, semiconductor fabrication, device integration, and reliability. As a chair of multiple strategic research sectors, Kanwal was responsible for driving advanced technology research efforts over six generations of Moore’s law in industry, academia, and consortia-led engagements. He was awarded Intel’s highest honor, the “Intel Achievement Award,” for industry-defining impact. Kanwal also led Intel’s efforts in developing and scaling silicon-based quantum computing across multiple core research areas in physics, electronics, cryogenics, and computation. He has authored more than a hundred patents and publications in organic chemistry, semiconductor devices, and quantum computing.

Mariano-Florentino (Tino) Cuéllar is the tenth president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. A former justice of the Supreme Court of California, he served two U.S. presidents at the White House and in federal agencies. He was a faculty member at Stanford University for two decades, where he was the Stanley Morrison Professor of Law and (by courtesy) Political Science. He directed the university’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and previously, co-directed its Center for International Security and Cooperation. He chairs the board of the William & Flora Hewlett Foundation and is a member of the Harvard Corporation. He currently serves on the U.S. Department of State’s Foreign Affairs Policy Board. Born in Matamoros, Mexico, he grew up primarily in communities along the U.S.-Mexico border. He graduated from Harvard College and Yale Law School and received a Ph.D. in political science from Stanford University.

Michael Nelson is a senior fellow in the Carnegie Endowment’s Technology and International Affairs Program, which helps decisionmakers understand and address the impacts of emerging technologies. Prior to joining Carnegie, he started the global public policy office for Cloudflare and also served as a principal technology policy strategist in Microsoft’s Technology Policy Group. Before that, he was a senior technology and telecommunications analyst with Bloomberg Government. Nelson has also taught courses about the future of the internet, cyber-policy, technology policy, innovation policy, and e-government at Georgetown University. Before joining the Georgetown faculty, Nelson was director of internet technology and strategy at IBM, where he managed a team helping define and implement IBM’s next-generation internet strategy. In 1993, he joined Vice President Al Gore at the White House and worked with President Bill Clinton’s science adviser on telecommunications policy, encryption, electronic commerce, and data policy.

Miriam Wimmer is a director of the Brazilian National Data Protection Authority (ANPD). She holds a PhD in communications from the University of Brasília and a master’s degree in public law from the State University of Rio de Janeiro. She is a professional civil servant since 2007, with experience in senior positions in the Ministry of Science and Technology, the Ministry of Communications, and the national telecommunications regulator, Anatel. She is also a professor of law at IDP-Brasília and a guest lecturer on digital law and personal data protection at several other institutions.

Peter Rabley is an experienced investor and operator with a profound focus on early-stage investment in the earth observation and space sectors. With a notable career as a successful entrepreneur, he has built multiple enterprise software companies, leading to multiple successful exits. Most recently, he has co-founded PLACE, a groundbreaking nonprofit geospatial data institute spun out of the Omidyar Network, where he spent eight years leading investments and grants in the global property rights sector. PLACE harnesses the latest mapping technology and innovative fundraising strategies to establish a self-financing geospatial data trust with DPI and DPG at the core.

Pramod Varma is the former chief architect of Aadhaar. He was also the chief architect for various India Stack layers, such as eSign, Digital Locker, UPI, and the Data Empowerment and Protection Architecture (DEPA). He played an integral role in architecting India’s digital health infrastructure (ABDM), vaccination and immunization infrastructure (CoWIN and DIVOC), and the Unified Health Interface (UHI). He is currently the chief technology officer of the EkStep Foundation, a not-for-profit that helped build DIKSHA under Project Sunbird (sunbird.org). In addition, he is the co-founder of FIDE.org and the genesis author of the open-source Beckn protocol (becknprotocol.io), which is the basis for efforts such as ONDC and NammaYatri. He is also an adjunct faculty member at IIITB and co-chair at the global Centre for DPI (CDPI.dev). As a technology leader, he helps with many DPI initiatives in India and across the globe.

Shankar Maruwada is the co-founder and chief executive officer of the EkStep Foundation, a philanthropy he co-founded in 2015 along with Nandan Nilekani and Rohini Nilekani. Shankar has over twenty-seven years of experience across the corporate, entrepreneurial, nonprofit, and government sectors. He was part of the founding team for Aadhaar—in fact, he was responsible for naming it. He also co-founded Marketics, one of India’s first data analytics startups. He serves as a mentor to various startups, social entrepreneurs, and not-for-profits. In addition, he also serves or has served on multiple government committees and task forces, including the National Curriculum Framework National Steering Committee, DIKSHA, NDEAR, and iGOT. Shankar is deeply passionate about innovations that leverage technology for equitable, large-scale transformation in society, keeping the citizen at the center. He is an alumnus of IIT Kharagpur and the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad.

Ian Klaus is the founding director of Carnegie California. He is a leading scholar on the nexus of urbanization, geopolitics, and global challenges, with extensive experience as a practitioner of subnational diplomacy. Ian has built and led several global research efforts focused on consolidating localized knowledge. Most recently, he co-led and served as the series editor for the Summary for Urban Policymakers. As a practitioner, Ian has extensive experience in advancing and implementing policy. He recently helped lead the development of both the Urban 20 and Urban 7, the G20 and G7 urban-focused engagement groups. He has also served as the deputy U.S. negotiator for Habitat 3, as the senior adviser for global cities at the U.S. State Department, and as a member of the Policy Planning Staff. Ian holds an MA from Oxford University, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar, and a PhD in international history from Harvard University. He is the author of Forging Capitalism and Elvis is Titanic.

Kevin O’Neil is the managing director for new frontiers at The Rockefeller Foundation, where he leads a team that seeks to convert big ideas into practical action through research, convening, and catalytic grantmaking. Kevin previously led a Rockefeller Foundation team that researched and developed new initiatives and provided evidence for major strategic decisions across the foundation’s portfolio. Kevin has been a research fellow at the University of Cape Town, a fellow of the Thomas J. Watson Foundation, and an analyst at the Migration Policy Institute. He served as a firefighter on four continents and holds a PhD in population science and public affairs from Princeton University and a BA in economics from Swarthmore College.

Amlan Mohanty is a nonresident scholar at Carnegie India. He is also a technology lawyer and policy consultant based in Bangalore, with over ten years of experience working with big tech, law firms, think tanks, and the government. Before going independent, he led Google’s public policy and government affairs portfolio in India across privacy, content regulation, competition, and AI. Prior to that, he worked at some of India’s finest law firms and has helped the Indian government develop landmark policies on digital privacy, content policy, and telecom. He has been a visiting faculty member at the National Law School of India University and Career Launcher, where he taught courses on technology policy and legal reasoning. He holds a degree from the National Law School of India, where he was chief editor of the Indian Journal of Law and Technology. He writes essays about the impact of technology on business, politics, and society on his website, Techlawtopia.

Ansgar Baums is a Helmut Schmidt Fellow of the German Marshall Fund and the author of the forthcoming book, The Tech Cold War (Lynne Rienner Publishers). He has sixteen years of experience as a global government relations and geopolitical risk manager, working for international companies like Zoom, Hewlett-Packard, and SAP. He is based in Berlin, Germany.

Anand Raghuraman is a director of global public policy at Mastercard, where he shapes the company’s strategic engagement and thought leadership on cutting-edge topics at the intersection of geopolitics, digital governance, and trade. He is also a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. In 2022, he spearheaded the council’s flagship U.S.-India Digital Economy Task Force and led the drafting of its landmark report, “The Case for a U.S.-India Digital Handshake.” Anand has also had a dynamic global career in the private sector and think tank space, most recently as a vice president at The Asia Group. In 2023, he was selected as an international strategy forum fellow by Schmidt Futures and named a corporate leader with the Council on Foreign Relations. He was previously a rising leader with the Aspen Strategy Group and a member of the South Asia Policy Working Group within the Biden-Harris 2020 campaign.

Konark is a lawyer who has researched certain areas in the digital economy, focusing primarily on approaches to the antitrust regulation of digital companies. He is also an avid follower of the regulation of the space technology ecosystem. Previously, he worked at India’s antitrust regulator, the Competition Commission of India (CCI), where he worked closely with senior officials on a variety of matters. He has also been a fellow at the Centre for The Digital Future, where he contributed to the discourse on the comparative regulation of technology platform firms. Before that, he worked at Rajah & Tann Asia, where he worked in their South Asia Practice Group and the Telecom, Media and Technology team. Konark holds an LLM in corporate and financial services law from the National University of Singapore and a BA, LLB degree from the Symbiosis Law School, Pune.

Johanna Weaver is the founding director of the Tech Policy Design Centre at the Australian National University. Earlier, she was Australia’s chief cyber negotiator at the United Nations. A recovering diplomat and a reformed commercial litigator, Johanna is proudly neurodiverse. She champions tech policy as a tool to shape technology for the long-term benefit of humanity.

Rudra Chaudhuri is the director of Carnegie India. His research focuses on the diplomatic history of South Asia, contemporary security issues, and the important role of emerging technologies and digital public infrastructure in diplomacy, statecraft, and development. His research has been published in several scholarly journals, such as The International History Review, Diplomacy & Statecraft, and India Review. From 2009 to 2022, he was a lecturer and a senior lecturer at the Department of War Studies at King’s College London. In 2012, he established the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office’s (FCDO) Diplomatic Academy for South Asia at King’s College London, serving as its founding director from 2013 to 2022. He previously taught at the UK Joint Services Command and Staff College. He holds a PhD in war studies from King’s College London. He is the author of Forged in Crisis: India and the United States Since 1947 and the editor of War and Peace in Contemporary India.

Seth Center is the acting special envoy for critical and emerging technology. Previously, he was a member of the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff, where he helped develop the department’s cyberspace and emerging technology strategic framework. He was also a senior advisor to the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence, where he led the writing of the commission’s final report. In addition, he served as the director for national security strategy and history on the White House’s National Security Council (NSC) staff, as well as a historian on the NSC staff and for the State Department. Outside of government, he was most recently a senior advisor at the Special Competitive Studies Project. Prior to that, he was a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He received his PhD from the University of Virginia and his BA from Cornell University.

Ashok Malik is a partner at The Asia Group (TAG) and chair of its New Delhi-based subsidiary in India, where he leads the firm’s in-market business strategy and services. Prior to joining TAG, he served as a policy advisor/additional secretary in India’s Ministry of External Affairs from 2019–22. In that capacity, he worked closely with the senior leadership of the ministry to help shape and explain India’s foreign policy during a crucial and eventful period for the international system. Between 2017 and 2019, he served as the principal speech writer and spokesperson for the president of India.

Eric Desautels currently serves as the senior coordinator for emerging technologies and security domains in the Bureau of Arms Control, Deterrence, and Stability at the U.S. Department of State, where he oversees the work of the Office of Emerging Security Challenges. In this role, he leads the Department of State’s efforts related to missile defense issues, outer space security issues, emerging technology security issues, undersea cable security issues, and polar security issues.

Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw is a pioneering biotech entrepreneur, a healthcare visionary, a global influencer, and a passionate philanthropist. She is a pioneer of India’s biotech industry and the founder of Biocon. She has received two of India’s highest civilian honors, the Padma Shri (1989) and the Padma Bhushan (2005). She has been conferred with the EY World Entrepreneur of the Year™ 2020 Award, which is a testimony to her four-decade-long entrepreneurial journey. In 2021, she was also appointed as the vice chair of the U.S.-India Business Council. She has received many other international accolades, including the Order of Australia, Australia’s highest civilian honor in 2020, the highest French distinction, Knight of the Legion of Honour in 2016, and the Othmer Gold Award in 2014. She serves on the boards of Pure-Tech Health, USA, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Centre, USA, and Narayana Health, India, apart from holding key positions in various industry, educational, government, and professional bodies globally.

Rohini Srivathsa is the chief technology officer at Microsoft India and South Asia. She is responsible for helping customers and partners in India and South Asia realize the potential of AI. She began her career in R&D at AT&T Bell Laboratories in the United States, then pivoted to strategy consulting at BCG and IBM GBS (erstwhile PwC) in India and emerging markets. Her R&D and strategy careers converged as the chief technology officer of the present-day Jana Small Finance Bank. She holds an MBA from Wharton, a PhD in computer engineering from UT-Austin, and is adjunct faculty at ISB Executive Education.

Kirti Seth is the chief executive officer of the IT-ITES Sector Skills Council (SSC) at NASSCOM. SSC NASSCOM has the honor of building and implementing FutureSkills Prime, India’s national digital skilling platform, in partnership with the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, Government of India. She has over thirty years of experience in entrepreneurship, management, and driving change. Previously, she was the CEO of NIIT Uniqua, the NIIT-Genpact joint venture. As part of NIIT’s Global Consulting and Advisory practice, she was also an advisor to Fortune 500 companies like the Bank of America, Shell, Rio Tinto, and MetLife. Kirti completed her BA in economics from Delhi University and an MBA from IIM, Calcutta. She is also a certified executive coach and a certified practitioner of learning and performance from the Association for Talent Development.

Sopnendu Mohanty, currently the chief fintech officer at the Monetary Authority of Singapore, is responsible for creating development strategies, public infrastructure, and policies around technology-driven innovation. He has over two decades of public and private sector experience in technology, operations, digital finance, and investment strategies. He extensively engages with global technology and financial services ecosystems and has championed notable collaborative public goods like API Exchange, the Singapore Fintech Festival, payment rails, data exchange platforms, and experimental programs like Project Ubin. In addition, he advises many international global advisory bodies on fintech, innovation, and inclusion. Within five years of his leadership, Singapore has become a leading global fintech hub, producing unicorns and being home to many vibrant fintech companies. He has co-authored several patented works on the application of digital technology in finance and won many industry recognitions.

Lovneesh Chanana leads the public policy, government programs, and thought leadership engagements for SAP in Asia Pacific and Japan. A known thought leader in the policy and program-level application of technology, he has been contributing to the development of the technology policy landscape and leading many transformative government projects. Working closely with industry bodies, where he leads and drives the digital economy agenda, he has been contributing to knowledge sharing around technology developments and policies around cloud, SMEs, sustainability, artificial intelligence, workforce skilling, entrepreneurship, and innovation. He has been instrumental in structuring and forging government-industry partnerships to create a conducive digital ecosystem in many Asian countries. He has also been contributing to the capacity building of government officials and has designed and developed training programs on various areas related to technology programs in the government. He has a PhD in information systems management with a research focus on mobile governance.

Sabine Mensah has strong leadership experience in financial inclusion, digital payment systems, and mobile money across multilaterals and the private sector. As the deputy chief executive officer, she oversees AfricaNenda’s policy, advocacy, and capacity development efforts through strategic partnerships, convenings, and thought leadership, aiming to strengthen the inclusivity of the digital payments ecosystem across Africa. Previously, she served as the regional digital hub manager for the United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) for six years, leading the development of inclusive digital economies to accelerate financial inclusion across West and Central Africa. She also successfully drove UNCDF’s global digital infrastructure workstream. Furthermore, she consulted for the mobile money industry in Africa and worked in the remittance industry for fifteen years in Africa, the United States, and Canada. She is a certified digital finance practitioner by the Digital Frontier Institute and an alumna of the Institut Franco-Américain de Management in France and Central Michigan University in the United States.

Sameer Lalwani is a senior expert on South Asia at the U.S. Institute of Peace and a nonresident senior fellow with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. Previously, he directed the South Asia program at the Stimson Center. He has also been an adjunct professor at George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs and a Stanton nuclear security postdoctoral fellow at the RAND Corporation. His research interests include deterrence, interstate rivalry, alliances, defense technology, and Indo-Pacific security. He is a term member with the Council on Foreign Relations and a contributing editor to War on the Rocks. He earned his doctorate in political science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and was an affiliate of the MIT Security Studies Program. His research has been published in numerous outlets, including Security Studies, International Studies Quarterly, Survival, the Washington Quarterly, Asian Survey, Foreign Affairs, Politico, and the New York Times.

Ashutosh Chadha is responsible for corporate affairs and public policy for India and South Asia at Microsoft. In his role, he works closely with key audiences in the government, academia, industry, and multilaterals to help frame policies that enable the deepening of technology usage, drive digital inclusion and growth, and ensure the innovation and safety of the digital ecosystem. Previously, Ashutosh has worked at Mastercard, Wipro Ltd., Intel India, Shell India Pvt. Ltd., NIIT, and the National Dairy Development Board. Ashutosh is a regular speaker at national and international fora hosted by organizations like the World Bank, the World Trade Organization, UNICEF, and UNESCO on topics ranging from corporate affairs, public policy, education, CSR, innovation, and entrepreneurship. He has had extensive experience in business development, channel management, strategic planning and corporate affairs, government relations, and policy advocacy. He is a management graduate from the Institute of Rural Management, Anand, Gujarat.

Sarah Kemp is the vice president of international government affairs at Intel Corporation. She has been the associate vice president and head of global health policy for Organon and was Merck’s associate vice president, public policy, for China, Japan, and emerging markets. Previously, she was the deputy undersecretary for the International Trade Administration at the U.S. Department of Commerce in Washington, DC. Before her time in DC, she was the minister counselor for commercial affairs at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. She has served as the country manager in China and Vietnam and had multiple postings in Beijing, Hong Kong, and Bangkok. She joined commerce as a Presidential Management Fellow. She received her MBA from the Chinese University of Hong Kong and her Master of Public Administration from Columbia University. She is an independent board member of NTIC and a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on China.

Suyash Rai is the deputy director and fellow at Carnegie India. His research focuses on the political economy of economic reforms and the performance of public institutions in India. His current research looks at the financial sector, the fiscal system, and the infrastructure sector. Rai has published papers in the areas of fiscal policy, financial reforms, banking regulation, and infrastructure policy. Before joining Carnegie India, Rai was a fellow at the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy. He has held consulting positions with the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP) of the World Bank and with the Ministry of Finance of the Government of India. Additionally, he served as a member of the committee on framing a code on the resolution of financial firms of the department of economic affairs at the Ministry of Finance and the committee on the pricing of Aadhaar-based services of the Unique Identification Authority of India.

Suhel Bidani is the lead for digital in the India office of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. In this role, he is responsible for the digital/technology interventions across the foundation’s programmatic work in India and works closely with government stakeholders, the private sector, and philanthropic partners in India. Prior to joining the Gates Foundation, he worked extensively in business and technology advisory services. In the last nearly twelve years of his professional life, he has spent his time on D4D (Digital for Development) initiatives across more than twenty-five countries in Asia and Africa. Suhel holds a bachelor’s degree in commerce and an MBA in strategy and systems.

Nandan Nilekani is the co-founder and chairman of Infosys Technologies Limited. He was the founding chairman of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI). Nandan is the co-founder and chairman of the EkStep Foundation, a not-for-profit effort to create a learner-centric, technology-based platform to improve basic literacy and numeracy for millions of children. In January 2023, he was appointed as the co-chair of the “G20 Task Force on Digital Public Infrastructure for Economic Transformation, Financial Inclusion and Development.” At the Business Standard Annual Awards in 2022, he was conferred with “The Lifetime Achievement Award.” In 2019, he was inducted as an international honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2006, he was awarded the Padma Bhushan. He is the author of Imagining India and the co-author of Rebooting India: Realizing a Billion Aspirations and The Art of Bitfulness: Keeping Calm in the Digital World.

Rudra Chaudhuri is the director of Carnegie India. His research focuses on the diplomatic history of South Asia, contemporary security issues, and the important role of emerging technologies and digital public infrastructure in diplomacy, statecraft, and development. His research has been published in several scholarly journals, such as The International History Review, Diplomacy & Statecraft, and India Review. From 2009 to 2022, he was a lecturer and a senior lecturer at the Department of War Studies at King’s College London. In 2012, he established the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office’s (FCDO) Diplomatic Academy for South Asia at King’s College London, serving as its founding director from 2013 to 2022. He previously taught at the UK Joint Services Command and Staff College. He holds a PhD in war studies from King’s College London. He is the author of Forged in Crisis: India and the United States Since 1947 and the editor of War and Peace in Contemporary India.

Mariano-Florentino (Tino) Cuéllar is the tenth president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. A former justice of the Supreme Court of California, he served two U.S. presidents at the White House and in federal agencies. He was a faculty member at Stanford University for two decades, where he was the Stanley Morrison Professor of Law and (by courtesy) Political Science. He directed the university’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and previously, co-directed its Center for International Security and Cooperation. He chairs the board of the William & Flora Hewlett Foundation and is a member of the Harvard Corporation. He currently serves on the U.S. Department of State’s Foreign Affairs Policy Board. Born in Matamoros, Mexico, he grew up primarily in communities along the U.S.-Mexico border. He graduated from Harvard College and Yale Law School and received a PhD in political science from Stanford University.

Eric H. Loeb is the executive vice president of global government affairs at Salesforce, where he is responsible for leading government relations, public policy, and public affairs efforts. The global team he supports is the face of Salesforce for policymakers, policy influencers, diplomats, and civil society. Previously, he was AT&T’s international external affairs SVP, global regulatory counsel for Concert Communications plc, and U.S. regulatory counsel for British Telecommunications plc. He has extensive experience in the geopolitical arena with the policies and politics of governments across the globe. He serves as a leader on Salesforce’s Racial Equality & Justice Task Force as the chair of the Policy Pillar, in addition to being the executive sponsor of WINDforce, an employee equality group representing a Worldwide Indigenous Network of Diversity. He is a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He is a graduate with honors from Georgetown University Law Center and Bowdoin College.

Kathleen McGowan is the senior director for policy at the Digital Impact Alliance and has over twenty years of experience as a proven policy innovator, diplomat, and digital development strategist. She is motivated by the need to ensure that this era of rapid digitization prioritizes the interests of people and strengthens, rather than erodes, the foundations of open societies. Prior to joining the Alliance, Kay was a political officer at the U.S. State Department and later the United States Agency For International Development, where she focused on strengthening the resilience of marginalized communities via inclusive digital financial services. This included conceptualizing and building enduring partnerships, such as the UN’s Better Than Cash Alliance and a data governance peer learning network hosted by Smart Africa, the UN Economic Commission for Africa, and DIAL.

Jonathan Marskell is a senior digital development specialist with the World Bank, based in Jakarta. He currently has three roles. First, he is the global co-lead for digital data infrastructure, which includes digital public infrastructure, data hosting, data governance, and data-driven innovation. Second, he is a key member of the Identification for Development (ID4D) Initiative, where he covers projects and research in East Asia and the Pacific, South Asia, and East Africa. Third, he leads the World Bank’s digital development program in Indonesia and Timor-Leste. Prior to joining the World Bank in 2016, he worked for UN ESCAP, UNHCR, UNICEF, and IOM. He has lived and worked in Sydney, London, Bangkok, Singapore, and Washington, DC. He holds a master’s degree from King’s College London and a bachelor’s degree from Macquarie University in Sydney.

Sushil Pal is the joint secretary and chief vigilance officer in the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, Government of India. He has over twenty-three years of extensive experience as a civil servant in various ministries of the Government of India. His portfolio includes the International Co-operation Division and the Internet Governance Division. He also served as the focal point and co-chair for the Digital Economy Working Group as part of India’s G20 Presidency. He played a pivotal role in leading the G20 DPI negotiations, culminating in the first multilateral consensus on DPIs. He oversees investment and industry promotion in electronics hardware and semiconductors. He has extensive experience working on the program and finance verticals of various sectors, such as the Ministry of Home Affairs, economic sectors (Department of Fertilizers), social sectors (health), and the Revenue Department of the Government of India. He holds an MBA (Finance) and a postgraduate in operational research from Delhi University.

David Roos is the acting head of the Sector Project International Digital Policy at the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), GmbH. The sector project advises and supports German development cooperation actors and the European Commission on digital for development. The program thus contributes to implementing BMZ’s realigned position paper “Digitalisation for Development” and the Federal German Government’s “Digital Strategy.” He is currently involved in providing assistance to several developing countries by advising on digital public infrastructure and services strategies and policies, particularly on digital government and digital public goods. On behalf of the BMZ, he initiated the GovStack initiative with its partners from Estonia, ITU, and DIAL. He has ten years of on-the-ground experience in IT and software development projects. He has an educational background in political science and public administration and has studied at the University of Konstanz, Germany, and the Marmara Üniversitesi, Turkey.

Suhel Bidani is the lead for digital in the India office of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. In this role, he is responsible for the digital/technology interventions across the foundation’s programmatic work in India and works closely with government stakeholders, the private sector, and philanthropic partners in India. Prior to joining the Gates Foundation, he worked extensively in business and technology advisory services. In the last nearly twelve years of his professional life, he has spent his time on D4D (Digital for Development) initiatives across more than twenty-five countries in Asia and Africa. Suhel holds a bachelor’s degree in commerce and an MBA in strategy and systems.

Dan Baer is senior vice president for policy research and director of the Europe Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He was a diplomatic fellow at the University of Denver’s Josef Korbel School of International Studies from 2017 to 2019. He served in former governor John Hickenlooper’s cabinet as executive director of the Colorado Department of Higher Education from 2018 to 2019. Under President Obama, he was U.S. ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) from 2013 to 2017. Previously, he was a deputy assistant secretary of state for the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor from 2009 to 2013. Dan is the author of the recent Simon & Schuster book, The Four Tests: What It Will Take to Keep America Strong and Good.

Harsh Chugh is the chief operations officer for Kyndryl. He has more than twenty-five years of experience in engineering, management consulting, finance, and operations. He has lived and worked in the United States, Singapore, China, and India. Prior to joining Kyndryl, he was chief financial officer of PlanSource, which is a healthcare benefits administration software company. He previously held several leadership positions at IBM in global sales, business development, M&A, investor relations, treasury, and operational finance. Prior to IBM, he was a management consultant with PriceWaterhouseCoopers. He also worked as an engineer in both the public and private sectors in India. He holds a master’s in engineering from IIT Delhi and an MBA in finance from Indiana University. He also holds a Chartered Financial Analyst designation.

Ashok Malik is a partner at The Asia Group (TAG) and chair of its New Delhi-based subsidiary in India, where he leads the firm’s in-market business strategy and services. Prior to joining TAG, he served as a policy advisor/additional secretary in India’s Ministry of External Affairs from 2019–22. In that capacity, he worked closely with the senior leadership of the ministry to help shape and explain India’s foreign policy during a crucial and eventful period for the international system. Between 2017 and 2019, he served as the principal speech writer and spokesperson for the president of India.

Suyash Rai is the deputy director and fellow at Carnegie India. His research focuses on the political economy of economic reforms and the performance of public institutions in India. His current research looks at the financial sector, the fiscal system, and the infrastructure sector. Rai has published papers in the areas of fiscal policy, financial reforms, banking regulation, and infrastructure policy. Before joining Carnegie India, Rai was a fellow at the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy. He has held consulting positions with the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP) of the World Bank and with the Ministry of Finance of the Government of India. Additionally, he served as a member of the committee on framing a code on the resolution of financial firms of the department of economic affairs at the Ministry of Finance and the committee on the pricing of Aadhaar-based services of the Unique Identification Authority of India.

Ashley J. Tellis is the Tata Chair for Strategic Affairs and a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, specializing in international security and U.S. foreign and defense policy with a special focus on Asia and the Indian subcontinent. He is a counselor at the National Bureau of Asian Research and the research director of its Strategic Asia program, in addition to serving as an adviser to the chief of naval operations. While on assignment to the U.S. Department of State as senior adviser to the undersecretary of state for political affairs, he was intimately involved in negotiating the civil nuclear agreement with India. Prior to his government service, Tellis was a senior policy analyst at the RAND Corporation and a professor of policy analysis at the RAND Graduate School. He is the co-author of Grasping Greatness: Making India a Leading Power and has authored and contributed to several other publications. He holds an MA and a PhD in political science from the University of Chicago.

Markham Cho Erickson leads Google’s Centers of Excellence, a global team of subject matter experts focused on the application of law and policy to technology and the internet. Prior to joining Google, Markham was an attorney in private practice in the United States, where he represented internet, media, and telecommunications companies in regulatory complaints, investigations, rulemakings, legislative and policy matters, trial and appellate advocacy, and merger investigations. In private practice, he represented internet companies from the inception of the commercial internet in the mid-1990s and was involved in crafting the global regulations that apply to the internet and technology companies. He served as co-chair to the annual Broadband and Cable Law Seminar at the Practicing Law Institute in New York City. He was appointed by the White House to represent the United States before the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development on internet speech and regulatory matters.

Michael Sellitto is the head of global affairs at Anthropic, an AI safety and research company, and an adjunct senior fellow in the Technology & National Security Program at the Center for a New American Security. Prior to joining Anthropic, Michael was the founding deputy director of the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence, which is dedicated to advancing AI research, education, policy, and practice to improve the human condition. He served in the White House as the director for cybersecurity policy on the National Security Council staff from 2015–2018. He led international engagement on cybersecurity policy and strategy, promoted international adoption of a framework for strategic stability in cyberspace, and worked on issues related to the digital economy and internet governance. From 2009–2015, Michael served in a variety of roles at the U.S. Department of State.

Melinda Claybaugh is a director of privacy and data policy at Meta. Her team works to achieve Meta’s vision of globally consistent privacy and data regulations that protect people’s data while enabling innovation by driving advocacy on specific legislative proposals and helping design policy solutions for complicated or novel issues. She previously spent twelve years at the Federal Trade Commission, where she worked in the Division of Privacy and Identity Protection on enforcement actions related to consumer privacy and data security. Melinda later joined the Office of International Affairs, where she specialized in international privacy policy. She represented the United States in discussions at the OECD and in APEC, where she helped design global frameworks to enhance consumer privacy protections and strengthen enforcement cooperation among data protection authorities.

Amlan Mohanty is a nonresident scholar at Carnegie India. He is also a technology lawyer and policy consultant based in Bangalore, with over ten years of experience working with big tech, law firms, think tanks, and the government. Before going independent, he led Google’s public policy and government affairs portfolio in India across privacy, content regulation, competition, and AI. Prior to that, he worked at some of India’s finest law firms and has helped the Indian government develop landmark policies on digital privacy, content policy, and telecom. He has been a visiting faculty member at the National Law School of India University and Career Launcher, where he taught courses on technology policy and legal reasoning. He holds a degree from the National Law School of India, where he was chief editor of the Indian Journal of Law and Technology. He writes essays about the impact of technology on business, politics, and society on his website, Techlawtopia.

Thea D. Rozman Kendler was sworn in as the assistant secretary of commerce for export administration at the Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS), following unanimous confirmation by the United States Senate. In this role, she leads the export administration’s highly trained technical professionals in controlling the export of dual-use and military items for national security and foreign policy reasons, analyzing the impact of export controls, and supporting the U.S. defense industrial base. Among other responsibilities, she chairs the Advisory Committee on Export Policy, which resolves interagency policy disputes related to export license applications submitted to the BIS. To advance U.S. national security and foreign policy interests, she regularly engages with Congress, industry, academia, and other stakeholders on the nature and scope of BIS’s activities and the Export Administration Regulations. Before joining the Biden-Harris administration, she was a prosecutor in the Department of Justice’s National Security Division. She received her law degree from the University of Pennsylvania.

Vani Rao is a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service, Ministry of External Affairs, in which she has served since 1994. Since August 2020, she has been heading the Americas Division in the Ministry of External Affairs, which deals with India’s relations with the United States, Canada, and the Quad. Before that, she was the ambassador to Finland and Estonia from 2017 to 2020 and joint secretary (Overseas Indian Affairs). From 2011 to 2014, she served as the deputy chief of mission in the Embassy of India, Israel. Her other diplomatic assignments abroad include postings at the Indian missions in Mexico and Sweden. She also served as under secretary in the Europe West Division and director (Americas). She has an MA in political science from the University of Hyderabad, India, and an MS in environmental studies from San Jose State University in California, USA. She has been appointed as India’s next ambassador to Italy.

Sameer Lalwani is a senior expert on South Asia at the U.S. Institute of Peace and a nonresident senior fellow with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. Previously, he directed the South Asia program at the Stimson Center. He has also been an adjunct professor at George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs and a Stanton nuclear security postdoctoral fellow at the RAND Corporation. His research interests include deterrence, interstate rivalry, alliances, defense technology, and Indo-Pacific security. He is a term member with the Council on Foreign Relations and a contributing editor to War on the Rocks. He earned his doctorate in political science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and was an affiliate of the MIT Security Studies Program. His research has been published in numerous outlets, including Security Studies, International Studies Quarterly, Survival, the Washington Quarterly, Asian Survey, Foreign Affairs, Politico, and the New York Times.

Raghuram S. is an Indian Foreign Service officer of the 2006 batch. At present, he is serving as the joint secretary and head of the Policy Planning & Research Division in the Ministry of External Affairs, New Delhi. Prior to this, he served as the joint secretary as well as director in the United Nations-Political Division until July 2023. His earlier assignments at the ministry’s headquarters in New Delhi include stints in the Americas Division, the East & Southern Africa Division (as officer-in-charge of some Indian Ocean Region countries), and as the head of the Afghan Cell in the Pakistan-Afghanistan-Iran (PAI) Division. His previous overseas assignments include serving as the deputy chief of mission in the Embassy of India, Kabul, and as the political officer in the Indian embassies in Washington, DC, Islamabad, Rabat, and Paris. He holds a postgraduate degree in genetics. He speaks Kannada, English, Telugu, Hindi, and Tamil.

Tanuj Bhojwani is currently the head of people+ai, a not-for-profit working on AI for good. Since 2016, he has been working on various technical, legal, and policy aspects of digital public infrastructure with Nandan Nilekani. He has also co-authored a book, The Art of Bitfulness, with Nandan. Tanuj is currently on the board of the Digital Public Goods Alliance. He was previously a fellow at iSPIRT Foundation, where he worked on policy issues related to digital identity, payments, data protection, and drones. He holds a chemical engineering degree from IIT Bombay and attended Ashoka University to study liberal arts at the Young India Fellowship. Prior to iSPIRT, he was a VC and an entrepreneur.

Sunil Abraham has been the public policy director for data governance and emerging technologies at Meta India since October 2020. Under emerging technologies, Sunil also focuses on AI and how it can be leveraged for communities in the global south. Prior to joining Meta, he was an endowed professor at ArtEZ University of the Arts in the Netherlands. Sunil co-founded Mahiti Infotech twenty-three years ago in Bengaluru, which today continues to serve global civil society with free and open-source software solutions. He co-founded the Centre for Internet and Society in 2008, which had offices in New Delhi and Bengaluru, and served as its executive director for the first eleven years. The center has produced policy and academic research in areas like accessibility for the disabled, access to knowledge, openness, internet governance, telecom, and digital humanities. Sunil was elected as an Ashoka fellow in 1999 to explore the “democratic potential of the internet.”

Eunice Huang leads Google’s AI and emerging tech policy work in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region, where she engages governments and other stakeholders on the responsible development and deployment of AI. Prior to her current role, she led Google’s digital trade and competitiveness policy work in APAC, as well as Google’s engagement with the World Trade Organization (WTO). Before joining Google, Eunice spent over a decade in the Singapore Government’s Administrative Service, working on a diverse range of issues, including foreign policy, energy policy, trade policy, and economic development. She also represented Singapore abroad, as political secretary in the Singapore Embassy in Jakarta and as deputy permanent representative in the Singapore Permanent Mission to the WTO and WIPO. Eunice is a graduate of the University of Michigan and Oxford University.

Aubra Anthony is a senior fellow in the Technology and International Affairs Program at Carnegie, where she researches the human impacts of digital technology, specifically in emerging markets. Prior to joining Carnegie, Aubra worked at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) as strategy and research lead in the Innovation, Technology, and Research Hub. Aubra has been invited to speak and write on issues of inclusion and ethics in the context of AI and other emerging technologies in international development at various domestic and international forums. She currently serves on the AI for the Planet Advisory Board and the Expert Advisory Committee for the Global Index on Responsible AI. Before joining the federal government, Aubra was a Hatfield Scholar with the Center for Democracy and Technology. She received her PhD in physics from the University of Texas at Austin and was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Colorado.

Lea has worked at the intersection of technology, policy, and international development for over a decade. Before joining the Digital Public Goods Alliance as the lead for country policy and AI, she co-led the German development cooperation program “FAIR Forward - Artificial Intelligence for All,” which aims to democratize AI development. She is the recipient of the Digital Leadership Scholarship of the Hertie School and holds two master’s degrees, one of them in public administration with a specialization in digital governance and big data. She is on the advisory board of the German Federal Ministry for the Environment’s project on AI technologies for civil climate action, a board member of the Open Knowledge Foundation Germany, and a lecturer for digital development policy at her alma mater, the Hertie School.

Mahaveer Singhvi was appointed to the Indian Foreign Service in 1999. Since then, he has served in several important assignments in the Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India, including as joint secretary for new, emerging, and strategic technologies; counterterrorism; and Central Europe. He served as the director of SAARC, BIMSTEC, and border connectivity; East and Southern Africa; Latin America and the Caribbean; and multilateral economic relations. He also served as the deputy secretary for technical cooperation. He has represented India on several international forums during his various assignments in the diplomatic service. He speaks regularly on diverse subjects at various national and international conferences, seminars, and summits. He has been educated and trained at some of the world’s best institutions, including the University of Oxford, UK; IIM, Ahmedabad; LBSNAA, Mussoorie; the ICAI; and the University of Delhi, Rajasthan, and Jodhpur. His qualifications include LLB, ACA, ACS, ICWA, MBA, MBF, MSt (Oxford), and BCom (Hons).

Ian Klaus is the founding director of Carnegie California. He is a leading scholar on the nexus of urbanization, geopolitics, and global challenges, with extensive experience as a practitioner of subnational diplomacy. Ian has built and led several global research efforts focused on consolidating localized knowledge. Most recently, he co-led and served as the series editor for the Summary for Urban Policymakers. As a practitioner, Ian has extensive experience in advancing and implementing policy. He recently helped lead the development of both the Urban 20 and Urban 7, the G20 and G7 urban-focused engagement groups. He has also served as the deputy U.S. negotiator for Habitat 3, as the senior adviser for global cities at the U.S. State Department, and as a member of the Policy Planning Staff. Ian holds an MA from Oxford University, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar, and a PhD in international history from Harvard University. He is the author of Forging Capitalism and Elvis is Titanic.

D. B. Venkatesh Varma served in the Indian Foreign Service from 1988 to 2021. During his diplomatic career, he worked in the Office of the External Affairs Minister and in the Prime Minister’s Office. He served as India’s ambassador to the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, to the Kingdom of Spain, and to the Russian Federation. He has vast experience in India’s security and defense policies and served as the joint secretary in charge of disarmament and international security in the Ministry of External Affairs. He organized Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Vladivostok in 2019 and contributed to India’s Act Far East policy. He was the first recipient of the S. K. Singh Award for Excellence in the Indian Foreign Service in 2011 for his contribution to the negotiations of the civil nuclear initiative. He is a distinguished fellow at the Vivekananda International Foundation in New Delhi.

Molly Gambhir is a senior news anchor at WION, where she anchors the 9 p.m. flagship show, Gravitas. She recently assisted the channel with the launch of a new primetime show focusing on political affairs. She started her journey in the field of broadcast journalism over a decade ago as a television correspondent. She has covered some of the biggest global stories, including the Israel-Hamas war, the Taliban takeover of Kabul, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the COVID-19 crisis. She has traveled across India and beyond to report on big stories, including PM Modi’s first state visit to the United States, the Malabar Naval Exercise, and the 2015 Nepal earthquake, among others. Her style of news delivery and presentation is appreciated by viewers from around the world. She has also anchored WION’s 8 p.m. show Fineprint, which won the Best Prime Time Show award at the Future of News Awards 2022.

Arun K. Singh is a nonresident senior fellow at Carnegie India. He has extensive experience across the globe, including as India’s ambassador to the United States, Israel, and France. Throughout his distinguished career in the Indian Foreign Service spanning thirty-seven years, he has served during pivotal periods in key global capitals and was instrumental in shaping India’s policies, notably the continued progress in the U.S.-India relationship, India’s closer ties to Israel, and the formulation and implementation of India’s policies related to Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran, including in the period following 9/11. He has been a Halle Institute/GSI distinguished fellow at Emory University (2017–2022) and is a distinguished nonresident senior fellow in the Asia Program at the German Marshall Fund. He served as a member of India’s National Security Advisory Board in 2021–22 and is currently a visiting professor at Ashoka University. He holds a master’s degree in economics from the University of Delhi.

Nitin A. Gokhale is an author, thought leader, and one of South Asia’s leading strategic analysts. He has forty years of rich and varied experience behind him as a conflict reporter, editor, author, and now a media entrepreneur who owns and curates three niche digital platforms—BharatShakti.in, StratNewsGlobal.com, and Interstellar.news—focusing on national security, strategic affairs and foreign policy matters, and the upcoming Indian space industry. Starting his long and distinguished career in 1983, he has since led teams across media platforms. A specialist in conflict coverage, he has covered the insurgencies in India’s North-East, the 1999 Kargil conflict, and Sri Lanka’s Eelam War IV between 2006 and 2009. Author of over a dozen books on wars, insurgencies, and conflicts, Gokhale travels across the globe to speak at seminars and conferences and lecture at India’s premier defense colleges.

Rahul Matthan is a partner with Trilegal and heads the technology practice of the firm. After a career spent advising clients on issues as diverse as cryptocurrency, telecommunications regulation, internet and social media law, and technology M&A, he has played an increasingly active role in helping shape technology policy in the country. His book, Privacy 3.0: Unlocking Our Data-Driven Future, describes the evolution of privacy and the impact that technology has had on the evolution of this fundamental human right. His latest book, The Third Way: India’s Revolutionary Approach to Data Governance, describes how digital public infrastructure could offer a new approach to data governance. He speaks regularly on the intersection between technology, society, and the law and writes a weekly column on these issues in the Mint. He has served on the RBI Committee for Household Finance as well as the Kris Gopalakrishnan Committee on Non-Personal Data and is currently DPI advisor to the Ministry of Finance. Having served on the firm’s management committee for many years, he is currently a member of the board of Trilegal.

Sandeep Aurora is the director of government affairs and public policy at Microsoft. He is responsible for building a cohesive policy framework to accelerate the adoption of new technologies for the benefit of the country. He leads initiatives around public policy, building thought leadership on new and emerging technologies, and is especially focused on policies toward artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, and building a safe and secure internet. He is a firm believer in the public-private collaboration model to accelerate the adoption of forward-looking policies. He has worked in various leadership roles across public policy and other functions at Intel and IESA before joining Microsoft.

Vijay Chauthaiwale is in-charge of the Department of Foreign Affairs and a member of the National Executive of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). In this role, he coordinates with the Indian diaspora through the BJP’s global outreach platform, Overseas Friends of BJP (OFBJP). Before joining active politics, he worked in a senior management role in pharmaceutical research and development for eighteen years. He completed his PhD in microbiology at the University of Pune, India, and his post-doctoral fellowship at the National Institutes of Health, USA. He has attended the executive management program at the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore, and the leadership development program at the London Business School. He is the co-editor of Modi: Shaping a Global Order in Flux, The Modi Doctrine: New Paradigms in India’s Foreign Policy, and Hindutva in Present Context. He has authored peer-reviewed scientific papers in international journals and is the co-inventor of several global patents. He is also on the governing boards of several prominent scientific and educational institutions.

C. Raja Mohan is a senior fellow with the Asia Society Policy Institute in New Delhi. He was the director of the Institute of South Asian Studies, National University of Singapore, where he is currently a visiting research professor. He was the professor of South Asian studies at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, and at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He is one of India’s leading commentators on India’s foreign policy. He has been associated with several think tanks, such as the Institute of Defence Studies and Analyses, the Centre for Policy Research, and the Observer Research Foundation. He was the founding director of Carnegie India and served on India’s National Security Advisory Board. Earlier, he was the strategic affairs editor for the Hindu, Chennai, and writes a regular column for Foreign Policy and the Indian Express. Among his recent books are Samudra Manthan: Sino-Indian Rivalry in the Indo-Pacific, Modi’s World: Expanding India’s Sphere of Influence, and The New Asian Geopolitics: Military Power and Regional Order.

Konark is a lawyer who has researched certain areas in the digital economy, focusing primarily on approaches to the antitrust regulation of digital companies. He is also an avid follower of the regulation of the space technology ecosystem. Previously, he worked at India’s antitrust regulator, the Competition Commission of India (CCI), where he worked closely with senior officials on a variety of matters. He has also been a fellow at the Centre for The Digital Future, where he contributed to the discourse on the comparative regulation of technology platform firms. Before that, he worked at Rajah & Tann Asia, where he worked in their South Asia Practice Group and the Telecom, Media and Technology team. Konark holds an LLM in corporate and financial services law from the National University of Singapore and a BA, LLB degree from the Symbiosis Law School, Pune.

Kathleen McGowan is the senior director for policy at the Digital Impact Alliance and has over twenty years of experience as a proven policy innovator, diplomat, and digital development strategist. She is motivated by the need to ensure that this era of rapid digitization prioritizes the interests of people and strengthens, rather than erodes, the foundations of open societies. Prior to joining the Alliance, Kay was a political officer at the U.S. State Department and later the United States Agency For International Development, where she focused on strengthening the resilience of marginalized communities via inclusive digital financial services. This included conceptualizing and building enduring partnerships, such as the UN’s Better Than Cash Alliance and a data governance peer learning network hosted by Smart Africa, the UN Economic Commission for Africa, and DIAL.

Harsh Vardhan Shringla is the chief coordinator of India’s G20 presidency. Prior to this, he was the foreign secretary of India. In his almost four-decade-long diplomatic career, he served as India’s ambassador to the United States of America and Thailand and as the high commissioner of India in Bangladesh. He was also consul general of India in Durban, South Africa, and Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. He is an experienced multilateral diplomat, having worked on two Indian tenures on the UN Security Council, served in the Indian Mission to the UN in New York, and served as Permanent Representative to UNESCAP in Bangkok. As the foreign secretary, he managed key economic diplomacy initiatives, worked on overseas Indian issues with the diaspora, and coordinated major evacuation and humanitarian assistance and disaster relief operations in Ukraine, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh. He has an interest in conflict prevention, a subject on which he has pursued a course at Columbia University.

Mayur Datar works as a senior vice president and chief data scientist with Flipkart in Bengaluru. He leads a large team of data scientists, and together, they are working on building the most advanced e-commerce landscape in India. He is also a visiting faculty member with C-MInDS at IIT Bombay. Prior to joining Flipkart, Mayur worked for Google as a research scientist for over twelve years. Mayur has a doctorate in computer science from Stanford University and obtained his Bachelor of Technology from IIT Bombay. He was awarded the President of India gold medal for being the most outstanding student of his class at IIT. Several of his publications have been presented at renowned computer science conferences. He is known in the industry for his technical leadership and pragmatic, result-oriented machine learning. His research interests include data mining, algorithms, databases, and computer science theory.

Shivnath Thukral is the director and head of public policy for India at Meta. Earlier, he was the managing director of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, India, and set up the global think tank’s India office, leading operations and fundraising. He spent the first fifteen years of his career as a journalist with New Delhi Television Limited, India’s premier TV news channel. He established the network’s business channel, NDTV Profit, in 2003, taking over as the managing editor. Prior to joining Carnegie, Thukral worked with an Indian corporation, leading its global marketing efforts, including strategic and digital communications, across the world. Thukral has been a speaker at global events such as the World Economic Forum and the Milken Institute conference, as well as Indian industry summits on issues ranging from India’s economic policies, domestic politics, and the impact of new digital technologies on society. He was awarded the Eisenhower Fellowship in 2012.

Diana Mickevičienė is the ambassador of the Republic of Lithuania to the Republic of India. Previously, she was the Lithuanian ambassador to China from 2020 to 2022. She is a career diplomat with twenty-eight years of experience in Lithuania’s diplomatic service, having served before as the counsellor at the Permanent Representation of Lithuania at the Council of Europe, Strasbourg, and the minister counsellor (deputy head of mission) at Lithuania’s Embassy in India. She also served in the Latin America, Africa, Asia and Pacific Department at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Lithuania for a number of years before being appointed as the ambassador to China in 2020. She holds a BA in philosophy, an MA in history of culture and social anthropology, and a diploma in international relations. She has lectured on South Asian history at the Institute of Asian and Transcultural Studies, Vilnius University. She has published widely on Indian studies and is the author of All of My Indias.

Evan A. Feigenbaum is vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He was also the 2019–20 James R. Schlesinger Distinguished Professor at the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia, where he is now a practitioner senior fellow. Initially an academic with a PhD in Chinese politics from Stanford University, his career has spanned government service, think tanks, the private sector, and three regions of Asia. He has previously served at the U.S. State Department as deputy assistant secretary of state for South Asia, deputy assistant secretary of state for Central Asia, member of the policy planning staff with principal responsibility for East Asia and the Pacific, and an adviser on China to Deputy Secretary of State Robert B. Zoellick. He is the author of three books and monographs, including China’s Techno-Warriors: National Security and Strategic Competition from the Nuclear to the Information Age (2003), as well as numerous articles and essays.

Chantal Lakatos de Alcantara is a managing director in global government affairs, where she is responsible for Lam’s strategic engagement with international stakeholders, the U.S. Executive Branch, and other regulatory bodies critical to Lam’s business success. Prior to joining Lam, she served as the director of Nonproliferation Policy and International Engagement as well as the director of the Munitions Control Division in the Bureau of Industry and Security at the U.S. Department of Commerce. In this capacity, she was responsible for fostering bilateral and multilateral collaborative technology partnerships in addition to developing and administering strategic trade controls and related policy initiatives that address the international trade of sensitive technologies, commodities, and services. Prior to her U.S. government service, she was a vice president at Sotheby’s New York. She received her MBA in international business from the University of New York and her BA in anthropology from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Peter works for the European Commission’s Trade Department, focused on enforcement and legal affairs and increasingly different aspects of trade and security. This work covers export controls, trade sanctions, and the cooperation mechanism with Member States on foreign direct investment screening. He has spent most of his career “building” Europe from the inside, having graduated as a lawyer from Bristol University in the UK and the College of Europe in Bruges, Belgium. He joined the commission in 1992. He has always had a strong focus on communication, whether in work to open up Europe’s telecoms markets in the 1990s, as the commission spokesperson for information society and business, or in roles covering the EU’s economic reform agenda and as a member of the transition team for Commission President Jose-Manuel Barroso. Prior to his current role, he was director in DG Trade for policy coordination, inter-institutional relations, communications and resources from 2012–2020.

Nivruti Rai is the managing director and CEO of Invest India. She joined Invest India after twenty-nine years at Intel as a global business and technology leader. She led Intel India as the country head, driving Intel’s growth and investment in India. Most recently, she also led the worldwide automotive foundry business as the vice president of Intel Foundry Services. During her tenure at Intel India, she contributed significantly toward indigenous technology development, the start-up ecosystem, the electronics manufacturing ecosystem, and policy formulation, especially in the areas of critical and emerging technologies. She has been part of the leadership team in various industrial bodies and government committees and has a wealth of experience working closely with industry associations, business leaders, and government leaders. She received the prestigious Nari Shakti Puraskar from the Honorable President of India for her remarkable contributions in the field of technology.

Baijayant Panda is the national vice president of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and in-charge of the Assam and Delhi BJP units. He has been a four-time member of parliament, elected twice each to the Rajya Sabha and the Lok Sabha. He was also the chairman of the high-level expert committee formed by the Ministry of Defence for restructuring the National Cadet Corps. Before joining politics, he worked in the corporate sector and was active in industry organizations like the Confederation of Indian Industry, the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry, and the International Chromium Development Association. He helped to form the erstwhile Young Parliamentarians Forum and was its convener. He has also been associated with the India-USA Forum of Parliamentarians since its founding in 2001 and was its chairman for fifteen years. He was awarded the “Bharat Asmita National Award” for best parliamentary practices in 2008.

Carsten Maple is the principal investigator of the NCSC Academic Centre of Excellence in Cyber Security Research and a professor of cyber systems engineering in WMG at the University of Warwick. He is also a co-investigator of the PETRAS National Centre of Excellence for IoT Systems Cybersecurity and a fellow of the Alan Turing Institute, where he is a principal investigator on a $5 million project developing trustworthy national digital identity to enable financial inclusion. He is the co-investigator on the Framework for Responsible AI in Finance project, leading on security and privacy. He has an international research reputation, having published over 350 peer-reviewed papers. He has given evidence to government committees on issues of anonymity and child safety online. Additionally, he has advised the boards of public and multibillion-pound private sector organizations and is a member of two Royal Society working groups, including the working group on privacy-enhancing technologies.

Raluca Csernatoni is a research fellow working on the nexus between European defense and emerging technologies like AI at Carnegie Europe in Brussels, Belgium. At Carnegie Europe, she is a senior expert on new technologies for the EU Cyber Diplomacy Initiative - EU Cyber Direct project. She also leads Carnegie Europe’s research project on “The EU’s Constructive Techno-Politics of AI,” supported by the McGovern AI Grant. She is currently also a professor at the Brussels School of Governance and its Centre for Security, Diplomacy and Strategy at Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium. Recently, she was invited to join the Department of International Relations at the Central European University (CEU), Vienna, as a visiting faculty member. She is also a co-leader of the “Governance of Emerging Technology” Research Group at the Centre on Security and Crisis Governance, Royal Military College Saint Jean, Canada. Before joining Carnegie, she was a postdoctoral researcher and lecturer with the Department of International Relations, Institute of Political Studies, Charles University, Prague. She holds a PhD and a master’s degree in international relations from the CEU.

Rahul Matthan is a partner with Trilegal and heads the technology practice of the firm. After a career spent advising clients on issues as diverse as cryptocurrency, telecommunications regulation, internet and social media law, and technology M&A, he has played an increasingly active role in helping shape technology policy in the country. His book, Privacy 3.0: Unlocking Our Data-Driven Future, describes the evolution of privacy and the impact that technology has had on the evolution of this fundamental human right. His latest book, The Third Way: India’s Revolutionary Approach to Data Governance, describes how digital public infrastructure could offer a new approach to data governance. He speaks regularly on the intersection between technology, society, and the law and writes a weekly column on these issues in the Mint. He has served on the RBI Committee for Household Finance as well as the Kris Gopalakrishnan Committee on Non-Personal Data and is currently DPI advisor to the Ministry of Finance. Having served on the firm’s management committee for many years, he is currently a member of the board of Trilegal.

Alex Ellis is the British High Commissioner to the Republic of India. Previously, he worked as the deputy national security adviser for the integrated review on foreign and security policy. He was also the director general in the Department for Exiting the EU for three years. He served as the British ambassador to Brazil and Portugal and the director of strategy in the Foreign Office. He was a member of the cabinet of the president of the European Commission, with responsibilities for energy, climate change, competition, development, trade, and strategy. Before that, he was in the UK representation to the EU, working on the negotiations to establish the euro, the seven-year budget, and institutional issues including the Treaty of Nice. He worked in the British Embassy in Madrid and started his civil service career as a part of the team supporting the transition to multi-party democracy in South Africa following the release of Nelson Mandela.

Molly Gambhir is a senior news anchor at WION, where she anchors the 9 p.m. flagship show, Gravitas. She recently assisted the channel with the launch of a new primetime show focusing on political affairs. She started her journey in the field of broadcast journalism over a decade ago as a television correspondent. She has covered some of the biggest global stories, including the Israel-Hamas war, the Taliban takeover of Kabul, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the COVID-19 crisis. She has traveled across India and beyond to report on big stories, including PM Modi’s first state visit to the United States, the Malabar Naval Exercise, and the 2015 Nepal earthquake, among others. Her style of news delivery and presentation is appreciated by viewers from around the world. She has also anchored WION’s 8 p.m. show Fineprint, which won the Best Prime Time Show award at the Future of News Awards 2022.

Nivedita Mehra leads the USISPF in India and was a part of the three-member leadership team that founded the organization in 2017. The mission encompasses building a strategic partnership between the U.S. and India to achieve common goals of driving economic growth, job creation, innovation, inclusion, and entrepreneurship. Nivedita has spent the past fifteen years working across industry sectors in the U.S.-India business corridor as well as on strategic relations between both countries. She established the first India office for the US-India Business Council in 2007, serving as its India country head until 2017. She has been recognized many times by both the U.S. and Indian governments for her significant work in supporting and growing the commercial and strategic partnership between the countries. She holds a bachelor’s degree with honors in international relations and political economics from Clark University, as well as a Bachelor of Law degree (LLB) from Delhi University Law School.

Dilip Asbe has been the managing director and chief executive officer of the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) since 2017. Earlier, he was the chief operating officer of NPCI. He has played a pivotal role in designing, building, operationalizing, and managing large-scale innovative payments processing platforms, like Immediate Payment Service (IMPS), Aadhaar Enabled Payment System (AePS), India’s home-grown card network RuPay, and the much-acclaimed Unified Payments Interface (UPI). He was awarded the “Changemaker of the Year” Award by the former finance minister, the late Arun Jaitley, instituted by Business Line, for the revolutionary product UPI, which he spearheaded. In February 2023, he was conferred with a citation and awarded the Public Service Excellence Award 2022 by AIMA. He has also been conferred with the BMA TCS Business Leader of the Decade Award and the CNBC-TV18 India Business Leader Award. He holds a Master of Science (MS) degree in Global Management (Executive Programme) from the London School of Economics and Political Science, UK.

George Perkovich is the Ken Olivier and Angela Nomellini Chair and vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where he oversees the Technology and International Affairs and Nuclear Policy Programs. He works primarily on nuclear strategy and nonproliferation issues, cyberconflict, and new approaches to international public-private management of strategic technologies. He is the author of the prize-winning book India’s Nuclear Bomb (1999) and the co-author of Not War, Not Peace? Motivating Pakistan to Prevent Cross-Border Terrorism (2016). Perkovich has advised many agencies of the U.S. government and testified before both houses of Congress. He has been a member of the National Academy of Science’s Committee on Arms Control and International Security, the Council on Foreign Relations Task Force on Nuclear Policy, and was a principal adviser to the International Commission on Nuclear Nonproliferation and Disarmament, a joint initiative of the governments of Japan and Australia.

Tarun Chhabra serves as a special assistant to the president and senior director for technology and national security on the National Security Council (NSC) staff at the White House. He has previously served as the NSC director for strategic planning and director for human rights and national security issues during the Obama administration. He was also a senior fellow at the Center for Security and Emerging Technology at Georgetown University and the director of the Project on International Order and Strategy at the Brookings Institution. Chhabra has worked at the Pentagon as a speechwriter for two Secretaries of Defense. He has been a visiting fellow at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perry World House and a graduate fellow at Harvard University’s Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics. He has a JD from Harvard Law School, an MPhil from University of Oxford, and a BA from Stanford University.

Nitin A. Gokhale is an author, thought leader, and one of South Asia’s leading strategic analysts. He has forty years of rich and varied experience behind him as a conflict reporter, editor, author, and now a media entrepreneur who owns and curates three niche digital platforms—BharatShakti.in, StratNewsGlobal.com, and Interstellar.news—focusing on national security, strategic affairs and foreign policy matters, and the upcoming Indian space industry. Starting his long and distinguished career in 1983, he has since led teams across media platforms. A specialist in conflict coverage, he has covered the insurgencies in India’s North-East, the 1999 Kargil conflict, and Sri Lanka’s Eelam War IV between 2006 and 2009. Author of over a dozen books on wars, insurgencies, and conflicts, Gokhale travels across the globe to speak at seminars and conferences and lecture at India’s premier defense colleges.

Mathis Börner is a senior AI scientist in the AI CTO Office at SAP and a board member of the AI working group at Bitkom, Germany’s leading industry association for the digital economy. He holds a PhD in astrophysics with a research focus on machine learning-based data analysis. He has more than ten years of experience in the application of machine learning in various fields, including physics, the automotive industry, and SAP. In his role as an engineer at SAP, he trains advanced machine learning models and develops generative AI applications. In addition, he is heavily engaged in discussions at the national and EU levels on AI regulation. His strong research background and extensive practical experience help him demystify complex AI concepts for policymakers and interpret policy implications for engineers to foster understanding and collaboration between both sides, contributing to the development of practical AI regulations. Recently, he has been particularly involved in shaping SAP’s approach to EU AI law and general AI regulations.

Michael Nelson is a senior fellow in the Carnegie Endowment’s Technology and International Affairs Program, which helps decisionmakers understand and address the impacts of emerging technologies. Prior to joining Carnegie, he started the global public policy office for Cloudflare and also served as a principal technology policy strategist in Microsoft’s Technology Policy Group. Before that, he was a senior technology and telecommunications analyst with Bloomberg Government. Nelson has also taught courses about the future of the internet, cyber-policy, technology policy, innovation policy, and e-government at Georgetown University. Before joining the Georgetown faculty, Nelson was director of internet technology and strategy at IBM, where he managed a team helping define and implement IBM’s next-generation internet strategy. In 1993, he joined Vice President Al Gore at the White House and worked with President Bill Clinton’s science adviser on telecommunications policy, encryption, electronic commerce, and data policy.

Vivek Lall is the chief executive of the General Atomics Global Corporation, based in San Diego, California. He has been appointed to the Advisory Board of the Quad Investors Network announced by the White House in 2023. He has also been appointed through the Pentagon as a United States Technical Team member to the NATO STO (Science and Technology Organization). He is on the Industry Advisory Board of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. He serves on the International Advisory Group of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Board of Directors of the U.S. Japan Business Council, and the Global Board of Directors of the U.S. India Business Council in Washington, DC. He also serves as Senior Advisor to the Center for Commerce and Diplomacy at the University of California, San Diego, and on the Board of the Center for Advancing Global Business at San Diego State University. He was conferred the President’s Lifetime Achievement Award by the president of the United States of America in September 2022 and the “World Leader Award” by the House of Lords in the United Kingdom in 2023.

Arun K. Singh is a nonresident senior fellow at Carnegie India. He has extensive experience across the globe, including as India’s ambassador to the United States, Israel, and France. Throughout his distinguished career in the Indian Foreign Service spanning thirty-seven years, he has served during pivotal periods in key global capitals and was instrumental in shaping India’s policies, notably the continued progress in the U.S.-India relationship, India’s closer ties to Israel, and the formulation and implementation of India’s policies related to Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran, including in the period following 9/11. He has been a Halle Institute/GSI distinguished fellow at Emory University (2017–2022) and is a distinguished nonresident senior fellow in the Asia Program at the German Marshall Fund. He served as a member of India’s National Security Advisory Board in 2021–22 and is currently a visiting professor at Ashoka University. He holds a master’s degree in economics from the University of Delhi.

Arun K. Singh is a nonresident senior fellow at Carnegie India. He has extensive experience across the globe, including as India’s ambassador to the United States, Israel, and France. Throughout his distinguished career in the Indian Foreign Service spanning thirty-seven years, he has served during pivotal periods in key global capitals and was instrumental in shaping India’s policies, notably the continued progress in the U.S.-India relationship, India’s closer ties to Israel, and the formulation and implementation of India’s policies related to Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran, including in the period following 9/11. He has been a Halle Institute/GSI distinguished fellow at Emory University (2017–2022) and is a distinguished nonresident senior fellow in the Asia Program at the German Marshall Fund. He served as a member of India’s National Security Advisory Board in 2021–22 and is currently a visiting professor at Ashoka University. He holds a master’s degree in economics from the University of Delhi.

Bill Nelson was sworn in as the fourteenth NASA administrator on May 3, 2021. He is tasked with carrying out President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris’ vision for NASA to demonstrate American leadership in air, space, and on earth for the benefit of all humanity.  He has devoted almost five decades of his life to public service. He represented the state for eighteen years in the United States Senate and twelve years in the U.S. House of Representatives. He served on key committees, including as ranking member of the Senate Commerce Committee and chairman of the Subcommittees on Science and Space in both the Senate and the House. During his three terms as a U.S. senator, nearly every piece of space and science law has had his imprint, including the landmark NASA Authorization Act of 2010 and the NASA Transition Authorization Act of 2017. He graduated from Yale University and the University of Virginia School of Law.

Jonathan Finer currently serves as President Joe Biden’s principal deputy national security advisor. Previously, he was an adjunct senior fellow for U.S. foreign policy at the Council on Foreign Relations. Before that, he was chief of staff and director of policy planning at the U.S. Department of State, where he previously served as deputy chief of staff for policy. He also worked for four years at the White House, including as senior adviser to former deputy national security adviser Antony Blinken, as special adviser for the Middle East and North Africa, and as a foreign policy speechwriter for then vice president Joseph R. Biden. He joined the Obama administration in 2009 as a White House Fellow, assigned to the Office of the White House Chief of Staff and the National Security Council Staff. Prior to entering government service, he was a foreign and national correspondent for the Washington Post. He holds a law degree from Yale University, where he co-founded the International Refugee Assistance Project; an MPhil in international relations from Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar; and an undergraduate degree from Harvard.

Vivek Abraham is the senior director of external strategy, India & South Asia, for Salesforce. In his current capacity, he is responsible for strategic initiatives with key stakeholders, including government and industry, and is a part of the India leadership team at Salesforce. One of his key projects at Salesforce was to spearhead the organization’s COVID relief efforts in India, helping to bring in three planeloads of COVID concentrators. Previously, he was the vice president and a founding team member at Invest India, the National Investment Promotion and Facilitation Agency of India, heading global investor outreach along with other organizational initiatives. He has been a career investment banker, and before joining Invest India, he headed the European Sales Desk in London for SBI Capital Markets, the investment banking arm of the State Bank of India. Vivek graduated as a computer engineer from the Delhi College of Engineering and completed his MBA from the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore.

Eva Maydell is a member of the European Parliament and one of the lead negotiators on the EU’s Chips Act and Artificial Intelligence Act. She is a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader. Her policy priorities include innovation and the use of new technologies to support European competitiveness and fostering cooperation among global likeminded partners in the tech and democracy space. She has also worked on the updated EU cybersecurity legislation, the Network Information Security Directive, the Digital Services Act, and the Digital Markets Act. In the European Parliament, she is the vice chair of the Delegation for Relations with Japan as well as part of the delegation for relations with the US. She is also the president of the European Movement International, the largest organization of associations and civil societies in Europe. She has been awarded the European Parliament’s MEP of the Year Award twice.

Christian Klein is the chief executive officer and member of the executive board of SAP SE. In his role, he holds the overall responsibility for the corporate strategic direction, management, and performance of SAP. He joined the SAP Executive Board in 2018 as the head of the Intelligent Enterprise Group, combining global responsibility for the development and delivery of SAP’s core applications with the cross-board area mandate for SAP’s global business operations. He started his career at SAP in 1999 as a student. After holding various positions across the company, including chief financial officer of SAP SuccessFactors and SAP’s chief controlling officer, he was appointed chief operating officer of SAP in 2016, a role in which he continued until 2021. He holds a diploma in international business administration from the University of Cooperative Education in Mannheim, Germany.

Phillip Armstrong is the senior director, head of JAPAC Privacy, at Salesforce. In addition to leading the JAPAC Privacy Legal team, he is also the chief privacy officer for Salesforce Japan. His team is responsible for privacy engagement across the region, including interpreting new laws, developing policies and processes to support compliance, working with government affairs to drive interoperability of laws, and supporting commercial transactions. With almost twenty years of experience as a lawyer, he has practiced at top-ranked law firms in Toronto, Tokyo, and New York. Prior to joining Salesforce, he spent eight years working at Microsoft as both a commercial attorney and a privacy specialist. In 2017, Phil led a team of internal lawyers and compliance specialists to develop a GDPR compliance chatbot that won the CFO executive challenge at a Microsoft Hackathon, with over 4,000 teams participating.

James Crabtree is a geopolitical analyst and author, based in Singapore. He is currently a distinguished visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations and a columnist for Foreign Policy. He was previously the executive director of the Institute of International Strategic Studies in Asia and an associate professor in practice at the Lee Kuan Yew School. His book, The Billionaire Raj: A Journey Through India’s New Gilded Age, was named an Amazon best book of the year and shortlisted for the FT/McKinsey business book prize. He spent ten years as a well-known journalist and foreign correspondent, notably for the Financial Times, where he was both bureau chief in Mumbai and comment editor in London. He was a senior advisor in the UK prime minister’s Strategy Unit, under prime ministers Gordon Brown and Tony Blair. He has also worked for various think tanks in London and Washington, DC, and spent several years living in America, initially as a Fulbright Scholar at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.

Eric M. Garcetti serves as the twenty-sixth U.S. ambassador to India. He is a committed public servant, educator, and diplomat. After serving on the Los Angeles City Council for twelve years, he won election in 2013 as the youngest mayor in the city’s history. He then won reelection in 2017. As mayor, Garcetti oversaw a period of economic growth and opportunity, won a bid for Los Angeles to host the Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2028, and pursued an aggressive health and climate agenda. He served as a naval officer in the reserve component for twelve years. He earned a BA as a John Jay Scholar from Columbia University, where he studied Hindi and Indian culture. He holds a master’s degree from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs and was a Rhodes Scholar at Queen’s College, Oxford. He is a member of the Screen Actors Guild as well as an avid pianist and photographer.

Anupam Ray is the ambassador and permanent representative of India to the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva. He is also the incoming president of the Conference on Disarmament. He currently leads the Indian delegation to the meetings of the CCW processes, dealing with lethal autonomous weapons systems, multilateral meetings on outer space security, the Biological Weapons Convention, the UN General Assembly First Committee, and the UN Disarmament Commission. He is a member of the UN Group of Governmental Experts on Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space and was a member of the UN Group of Governmental Experts on Nuclear Disarmament Verification. He joined the Indian Foreign Service in 1994 and served in Bonn, Dhaka, London, New York, and Houston. Prior to joining his current position, he was the head of policy planning in the Ministry of External Affairs.

Karolis Žemaitis is the vice minister of the economy and innovation of the Republic of Lithuania, responsible for attracting investments, developing trade relations, and establishing a favorable start-up ecosystem. He holds an MA degree in international marketing and management from the ISM University of Management and Economics. In his previous career, he led the Go Vilnius team, responsible for the competitiveness of the Vilnius economy. Prior to joining Go Vilnius, Karolis Žemaitis held a number of positions at the Kaunas University of Technology, the public body Invest Lithuania, and various pan-European advocacy platforms, where he was engaged in working together with the administrative bodies of the EU and the Council of Europe.

S. Krishnan has been posted as secretary in the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, Government of India, since September 11, 2023. Previously, he served as additional chief secretary, Industries, Investment Promotion & Commerce Department, Government of Tamil Nadu, from March 2020 to August 2023. Of the 1989 batch of the Indian Administrative Service, he has also been additional chief secretary in the Finance Department and principal secretary in the Housing and Urban Development Department and the Planning, Development and Special Initiatives Department. He was the founder CEO of the Tamil Nadu Infrastructure Development Board. He has also served as the chairman of the Fifth Tamil Nadu State Finance Commission. He served as the senior advisor in the office of the executive director for India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Bhutan in the International Monetary Fund (Washington, DC) and represented the Government of India in the G20 expert groups on international financial architecture and global financial safety nets.

Chan Cheow Hoe is the government chief digital technology officer (GCDTO) of the Smart Nation Group. He is also concurrently the senior advisor of the Singapore Economic Development Board. He has more than two decades of extensive experience, both in the public and private sectors, with a strong track record in leading digital transformation changes in organizations and the government. As the GCDTO, he oversees the development of the government’s digital infrastructure and digital technology capability, as well as talent development in information and communication technology and smart systems. As senior advisor to the economic development board, he partners with the leadership team to shape the long-term vision for innovation in Singapore’s digital industry and aids in the development of strategies to fulfill that vision. He graduated from the National University of Singapore and obtained his master’s from the Wharton School.

Dr. Jane Munga is a digital policy expert and a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Jane leads the work on technology policy in the Africa program. Her research focuses on digital development, digital economy regulations, and digital inclusivity in African countries. Jane’s career has focused on policymaking, emphasizing the potential of digital technologies for digital transformation. Jane has previously worked for the Government of Kenya as an advisor in the Ministry of ICT Innovation and Youth Affairs, Ministry of Education, and Ministry of Interior. She also served as an economic expert at the National Communications Secretariat, an ICT policy advisory body for the Government of Kenya. In this capacity, she focused on developing digital economy policies and regulations, which included designing digital transformation programs for the Government of Kenya. Jane holds a PhD in political science and government and master’s degrees in economics and management from the University of Alabama.

Philip Green, Australia’s high commissioner to India, is a diplomat with experience on four continents. He has served as ambassador or high commissioner to Germany, Singapore, South Africa, and Kenya. He was prime minister Kevin Rudd’s international adviser (2009–2010) and chief of staff to foreign minister Rudd (2010–2012). He was awarded the Order of Australia Medal for his role in the response to the Bali terrorist tragedy in 2002.

Anish Kumar is the advisor for development partnership administration in the Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India. He is a public servant with a varied experience of over twenty years in the field of infrastructure projects in the “public-private partnership” mode, international transport connectivity projects, development partnership administration, and promoting digital public infrastructure abroad. Previously, he was the director for station redevelopment on the Railway Board at the Ministry of Railways. He has completed the Post Graduate Program in Public Policy & Management from the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore, India, and the Maxwell School of Citizenship at Syracuse University, USA. He holds a master’s degree in technology (civil/structure) from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, and a Bachelor of Engineering from the National Institute of Technology, Jamshedpur, India.

Lucilla Sioli is the director for artificial intelligence and digital industry within the Directorate-General CONNECT at the European Commission. She is responsible for the coordination of the European digitization of industry strategy and for policy development in the areas of AI and semiconductors, including regulatory approaches such as the AI Act and the Chips Act. The directorate also supports R&D&I in key digital industrial technologies, including microelectronics, photonics, robotics, and AI. Lucilla holds a PhD in economics from the University of Southampton (UK) and one from the Catholic University of Milan (Italy). She has been a civil servant with the European Commission since 1997.