Karen Kornbluh served until January as Principal Deputy US Chief Technology Officer and Director of the National Artificial Intelligence Office where she led implementation of the Biden Administration’s AI Executive Order. She previously served as Ambassador to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development under President Obama, spearheading the first global internet policymaking principles and launched the OECD Gender Initiative. Ambassador Kornbluh has held leadership positions in government, business, and nonprofits. She was Policy Director for then-Senator Barack Obama and served as a senior official at the Treasury Department and Federal Communications Commission, where she negotiated early internet policies.
Her private sector experience began when she started her career as an economist at forecasting firm Townsend-Greenspan and included strategy consulting to Fortune 100 companies at Telesis as well as serving as Executive Vice President at Nielsen, the global data firm. She chaired the boards of both the Open Technology Fund and Radio Free Europe and ran programs on technology and society at the Council on Foreign Relations, New America, and the German Marshall Fund of the US. She is a Washingtonian “Tech Titan,” and was profiled in a New York Times article titled “Fighting for Economic Equality.“ Her articles have appeared in an array of outlets, including Foreign Affairs, The New York Times, Washington Post, Atlantic Monthly, and Harvard Journal of Law and Technology. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and serves on the Maryland Economic Commission.