Speakers

Mona Chalabi

Pulitizer Prize winning data journalist Mona Chalabi is on a mission to, as she puts it, "take the numb out of numbers."

In her illustrations, animations, and articles for The Guardian and publications like Fivethirtyeight and The New York Times, she explores data sets from the timely (affirmative action, voting trends, disability rights) to the offbeat (popular dog names in New York City) to the eye-opening (how many Americans eat pizza for breakfast). She's on a mission to make sure as many people as possible can find and question the data they need to make informed decisions about their lives. In her lectures she shares the tools you need to navigate a world filled with data and how to better understand all the numbers from the noise. Chalabi was recently named to Fortune’s “40 Under 40 in Media & Entertainment.”

Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, New York Magazine, The Guardian and many more. She has written for radio and TV including NPR, Gimlet, Netflix (The Fix), BBC (Is Britain Racist? Radio 4 and The Frankie Boyle show) and National Geographic (Star Talk).

Chalabi is also an illustrator whose work has been commended by the Royal Statistical Society and exhibited at several galleries including the Tate, The Design Museum and the House of Illustration. Lastly, she’s a producer and presenter. Before she became a journalist, Chalabi worked with large data sets in jobs at the Bank of England, Transparency International and the International Organization for Migration. She studied International Relations in Paris and studied Arabic in Jordan. Chalabi was born and raised in London.

Rayid Ghani

Rayid Ghani is a distinguished career professor in machine learning and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University focused on the development and use of large-scale AI/Machine Learning/Data Science to help tackle large public policy and social challenges in a fair and equitable manner. Among other areas, Ghani works with governments and nonprofits in policy areas such as health, criminal justice, education, public safety, economic development, and urban infrastructure. Ghani is also passionate about teaching practical data science and started the Data Science for Social Good Fellowship that trains computer scientists, statisticians, and social scientists from around the world to work on data science problems with social impact.

Before joining Carnegie Mellon University, Ghani was the founding director of the Center for Data Science & Public Policy, research associate professor in computer science, and a senior fellow at the Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago. In his ample free time, Ghani obsesses over everything related to coffee and works with nonprofits to help them with their data, analytics and digital efforts and strategy.

Tim Hwang
Expert on AI, Machine Learning, & Technology Ethics

Tim Hwang is a machine learning expert, business leader, and entrepreneur whose career has focused on improving AI and understanding the impact of machine learning on society.

Having worked previously with groups including Google and IBM and dubbed “the busiest man on the Internet” by Forbes, Hwang served as a research fellow at the Georgetown Center for Security and Emerging Technology, where he focused on artificial intelligence and national security issues. Before that, Hwang was the director of the Harvard-MIT Ethics and Governance of AI Initiative, a $26M philanthropic fund and research effort backed by LinkedIn co-founder, Reid Hoffman, working to ensure that machine learning and autonomous technologies are researched, developed, and deployed in the public interest.

Using everyday life examples and captivating visuals in his presentations, he provides attendees with actionable insights on what they need to know right now about AI and how to best ethically implement it. By sharing his practical experience on the forefront of these technologies, Hwang brings nuance to the technological breakthroughs that have captivated the public in recent years and spotlights what’s likely to be coming right around the corner.

Prior to the AI Initiative, Hwang was the Global Public Policy lead for artificial intelligence and machine learning at Google, where he developed the company’s messaging and led government outreach on a broad range of questions around the social impact of the technology including security, safety, bias, and fairness. He also led research at Intelligence & Autonomy, a research initiative on AI and its influence in the labor markers, supported by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Hwang’s work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Wired, The Atlantic, and The Wall Street Journal, among others. In 2011, The Globe and Mail named Hwang one of a dozen people changing philanthropy, alongside Bill Gates and George Soros.

George F. Will

George F. Will's newspaper column has been syndicated by The Washington Post since 1974. Today it appears twice weekly in more than 300 newspapers across 47 states and four countries. In 1976 he became a regular contributing editor of Newsweek magazine, for which he provided a bimonthly essay until 2011. In 1977 he won a Pulitzer Prize for commentary in his newspaper columns.

In June 2019, Will published The Conservative Sensibility. Nine collections of Will's Newsweek and Washington Post columns have been published. His most recent, American Happiness and Discontents: The Unruly Torrent, 2008-2020, was released in September 2021. Will has also published two books on political theory, Statecraft as Soulcraft: What Government Does (1983) and Restoration: Congress, Term Limits and The Recovery of Deliberative Democracy (1992). In 1990, Will published Men At Work: The Craft of Baseball, which topped The New York Times bestseller list for two months. In 1998, Scribner published Bunts: Curt Flood, Camden Yards, Pete Rose and Other Reflections on Baseball, a best-selling collection of new and previously published writings by Will on baseball. Will's most recent book on baseball is A Nice Little Place on the North Side: Wrigley Field at One Hundred (2014). Will was a member of Major League Baseball's Blue Ribbon Panel, examining baseball economics, 1999-2000.

In 1981, Will became a founding panel member on ABC television’s "This Week" and spent over three decades providing regular commentary. Then followed three years with Fox News where he appeared regularly on "Special Report" and "Fox News Sunday," and three years with MSNBC.

Will was born in Champaign, Ill., educated at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn., Oxford University, and Princeton University, where he earned his Ph.D. and served as a trustee. He has taught political philosophy at Michigan State University, the University of Toronto, Harvard University, and Princeton University. Mr. Will served as a staff member in the United States Senate from 1970 to 1972. From 1973 through 1976, he was the Washington editor of National Review magazine. Today, Will lives and works in the Washington, D.C., area.