Karen Kornbluh

Ambassador Karen Kornbluh teaches and writes on AI policy. She served most recently as Special Assistant to the President and Principal Deputy White House Chief Technology Officer, where she was the Director of the National Artificial Intelligence Office. Previously, she served as U.S. Ambassador to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris and as a senior official at the Treasury Department and Federal Communications Commission. Kornbluh was Policy Director for then-Senator Barack Obama.

She is now Visiting Fellow at the Center for Democracy and Technology, Senior Advisor for Emerging Technology at the Milken Institute, and Adjunct Professor at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs.

Kornbluh started her career in the private sector forecasting industrial production as an Economist at Townsend-Greenspan and then worked as a strategy consultant for U.S. manufacturing firms. She was later Executive Vice President at global data firm Nielsen, where she led global privacy, government and public affairs, and launched the Nielsen Foundation.

She chaired the boards of both the Open Technology Fund and Radio Free Europe, grantees of the U.S. Agency for Global Media. Kornbluh founded and led think tank programs at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, the Council on Foreign Relations, and New America.

Her articles have appeared widely in outlets including Foreign Affairs, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic Monthly, and the Harvard Journal of Law and Technology.

She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and serves on the Maryland Economic Commission.

Education

• MA, Harvard University Kennedy School (Government & Business)
• BA, Bryn Mawr College (Economics & English)

Honors and Awards

• The New York Times profile, “Fighting for Economic Equality”
• Washingtonian, “Washington’s Top Influencers”
• Maryland Economic Commission, Member
• Council on Foreign Relations, Member
• Minority Media Telecommunications Council, “Extraordinary Service Award”