Digital Ethics Summit 2024

Stephen Almond

Executive Director, Regulatory Risk, Information Commissioners Office (ICO)

Stephen Almond, Executive Director for Regulatory Risk, leads the ICO’s teams charged with engineering information rights into the fabric of new ideas, technologies and business models as part of our dynamic digital economy, including through the Digital Regulation Cooperation Forum.

Prior to joining the ICO, Stephen led a World Economic Forum initiative to promote the adoption of a more agile, innovation-enabling approach to regulation with governments and tech firms worldwide. He previously worked in leadership roles across the UK Government, including creation of the White Paper on Regulation for the Fourth Industrial Revolution and roll-out of the Regulators’ Pioneer Fund, which invested in regulatory sandboxes and similar initiatives to unlock technological innovation.

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Dr Ann Borda

Ethics Fellow in the Public Policy Programme, The Alan Turing Institute

Dr Ann Borda is an Ethics Fellow in the Public Policy Programme at The Alan Turing Institute. Prior to joining the Institute, Ann held senior positions in government-funded data-intensive initiatives in Australia and the UK. In the UK, she managed a significant digital collections programme across the Science Museum London and other national museums promoting public understanding of science, society, and medical discovery.  She subsequently worked on a major Research Council co-funded eScience programme at JISC supporting big data tools and national digital services for higher education, such as the former Open Source Software Advisory Service at Oxford and the AHRC-funded Arts and Humanities eScience Centre at Kings College London.

In Australia, Ann was director of a consortium of universities overseeing seed funding for data innovation projects partnered with national research platforms and the Australian Synchrotron. She was subsequently CEO of an advanced computing enterprise supporting universities in high performance computing (HPC), software and compute applications. One of a handful of women in a leadership position in the HPC community at the time.

Concurrently, Ann is a transdisciplinary academic and a digital health informatician. She has contributed to evidence-informed policy, sustainable AI in healthcare, and the co-development of a national framework for climate change, health and well-being in Australia. She is an Honorary Principal Fellow in the Centre for Health Policy at the University of Melbourne, Australia, and an Honorary Senior Research Associate in the Department of Information Studies at University College London.

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Areeq Chowdhury

Head of Policy, Data & Digital Technologies, The Royal Society

Areeq Chowdhury is Head of Policy (Data and Digital Technologies) at The Royal Society. The team he leads at the Society focuses on how artificial intelligence and other data-driven technologies can, and should, be used to benefit humanity.

Areeq is also a Labour Party Councillor for Canning Town, in East London, and founded the influential technology policy think tank, WebRoots Democracy, which ran between 2014 and 2020. He has authored various reports on digital democracy, social media, and artificial intelligence. Most notably, Areeq led a high profile project on disinformation during the 2019 UK General Election, producing viral deepfakes of Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn endorsing each other for Prime Minister.

Areeq holds a BSc in Economics and Political Science from the University of Birmingham. His career history includes working at the Foreign Office; the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport; the UK Parliament; London City Hall; and KPMG.

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Gabe Fender

Principal Consultant: Product & Design, Thoughtworks

I believe design is a key capability of digital businesses which is why I am passionate about helping organisations shift to be user-centred and value-driven with product and design thinking. I’ve seen that the most successful teams have a user-centred culture and strong collaboration between product, design and engineering.

At Thoughtworks, I have helped clients de-risk launching new products to market, transform operations platforms and coach teams and individuals in agile product development.

I've moved to Newcastle to start up a new Thoughtworks office in the North East. I love getting out for walks with my dogs on the beaches and hills of Northumberland and continuously exploring my taste for Mexican food and pizza.

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Smera Jayadeva

Researcher in Data Justice and Global Ethical Futures , The Alan Turing Institute

Smera Jayadeva is a Researcher in Data Justice and Global Ethical Futures under the public policy programme.  

Prior to joining The Alan Turing Institute, Smera has worked in a collaborative placement with the Austrian Institute for International Affairs wherein the European and Indian approaches to medical AI were comparatively evaluated. She has experience in conducting research in the Synergia Foundation on themes ranging from geopolitics and policymaking to disruptive technology. Additionally, Smera has worked as an independent researcher in policy evaluation and governance in public and non-profit organisations.  
 
Smera holds an International Master in Security, Intelligence and Strategic Studies with distinction jointly awarded by the University of Glasgow, Dublin City University, and Karlova University. Her graduate dissertation titled “Systems in the subcontinent: Data, power, and the ethics of medical machine learning in India” evaluated the scope, challenges, and mediatory role of AI in Indian healthcare systems. She also holds a BA with a triple major in History, Economic, and Political Science from Christ University (Bengaluru).

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Kate Jones

CEO, Digital Regulation Cooperation Forum (DRCF)

Kate Jones is the Chief Executive Officer of the Digital Regulatory Cooperation Forum (www.drcf.org.uk).  Kate leads this innovative team, working to increase and deepen coordination between regulators of online services and technology for the benefit of both businesses and their customers.
 
Before joining the DRCF, Kate was an expert consultant and researcher on the governance of emerging technologies, with particular regard to human rights law, public international law and diplomacy. She was an Associate Fellow with the International Law Programme at Chatham House, Senior Associate with Oxford Information Labs, and member of the advisory board of an AI ethics company. She has published and spoken widely on aspects of national and international tech governance, with specialisms in artificial intelligence, disinformation and foreign interference, and the role of technical standards. 
 
In her work, Kate brings to bear her many years of experience as a legal adviser and diplomat with the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office, including as Legal Adviser to the UK Mission to the United Nations in Geneva and UK Deputy Permanent Representative to the Council of Europe in Strasbourg. She also draws on her experience of leadership, skills and technical expertise as Director of Oxford University’s Diplomatic Studies Programme and as Course Director and Advisory Board member of the Centre for Political and Diplomatic Studies. Kate took her undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in law at the University of Oxford and qualified as a UK solicitor at Norton Rose.

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Professor David Leslie

Director of Ethics and Responsible Innovation Research, The Alan Turing Institute

David Leslie is the Director of Ethics and Responsible Innovation Research at The Alan Turing Institute and Professor of Ethics, Technology and Society at Queen Mary University of London. He previously taught at Princeton’s University Center for Human Values, where he also participated in the UCHV’s 2017-2018 research collaboration with Princeton’s Center for Information Technology Policy on “Technology Ethics, Political Philosophy and Human Values: Ethical Dilemmas in AI Governance.” Prior to teaching at Princeton, David held academic appointments at Yale’s programme in Ethics, Politics and Economics and at Harvard’s Committee on Degrees in Social Studies, where he received over a dozen teaching awards including the 2014 Stanley Hoffman Prize for Teaching Excellence. He was also a 2017-2018 Mellon-Sawyer Fellow in Technology and the Humanities at Boston University and a 2018-2019 Fellow at MIT’s Dalai Lama Center for Ethics and Transformative Values.

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Antonella Maia Perini

Research Associate in Data Justice and Global Ethical Futures, The Alan Turing Institute

Prior to joining The Alan Turing Institute, Antonella worked as Project Manager at the Latin-American think tank Asuntos del Sur, where she coordinated training programmes on democratic innovation and digital rights, and later led a research consortium of seven universities and organisations studying the governance models in the responses to COVID-19. She also conducted digital security workshops and research on open government and digitalisation. Furthermore, Antonella assisted research on disinformation and hate speech at the Oxford Internet Institute and contributed to research led by the Centre of Technology and Society (CETyS) and Centro Latam Digital that aimed to understand the levels of awareness and implementation of AI ethical principles in start-ups developing AI systems in Latin America. She co-founded Youth IGF Argentina and between 2018 and 2019 was the Latin America and Caribbean Representative at the Executive Committee of the Non-Commercial Users Constituency of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers.
 
Antonella holds a BA in International Relations from Universidad de San Andrés (Argentina), an MA in International Relations by the University of Bologna, and an MSc in Social Science of the Internet by the Oxford Internet Institute from the University of Oxford. Her MSc dissertation sought to understand the way Latin American civil society organisations engage with discussions about ethics and governance of AI in Internet Governance arrangements, and how they interact with each other and the broader ecosystem.

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Matt Simons

Director of Social and Economic Justice, Thoughtworks

I am helping Thoughtworks make the struggle for social and economic justice an integral part of our business and social model.

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