Fr. Paolo Benanti (Advisor), is an Italian Catholic priest, theologian and academic. He is a member of the Third Order Regular of St. Francis who teaches at the Pontifical Gregorian University and is advisor to Pope Francis on issues of artificial intelligence and technology ethics. In addition to his service on three major Vatican councils, Fr. Benanti is a key leader and global advocate for The Rome Call for AI Ethics, an agreement to promote a sense of shared responsibility among international organizations, governments, institutions and technology companies for a future in which digital innovation and technological progress are centered on humankind.
John C. Havens (Advisor) is the Global Director for The IEEE Planet Positive 2030 Program that produced the Compendium document, Strong Sustainability by Design: Prioritizing Ecosystem and Human Flourishing with Technology-Based Solutions that inspired the creation of the IEEE 7800 Standards Series focused on sustainability.
He is also the Founding Executive Director of The IEEE Global Initiative on Ethics of Autonomous and Intelligent Systems which was responsible for creating Ethically Aligned Design: A Vision for Prioritizing Human Well-being with Autonomous and Intelligent Systems that was utilized by the United Nations, the OECD, IBM and dozens of organizations to create their AI principles, policies, and technology. John helped create the IEEE 7000 Standards Series, the largest suite of international standards focused on Artificial Intelligence and ethical / societal issues to date.
Previously, John was an EVP of Social Media at Porter Novelli and was a professional actor for over 15 years. John has written for Mashable and The Guardian and is author of the books, Heartificial Intelligence: Embracing Our Humanity To Maximize Machines and Hacking Happiness: Why Your Personal Data Counts and How Tracking it Can Change the World.
Dr. Mennatullah Hendawy (Advisor) is an interdisciplinary urban planner working at the intersections of cities, media, and technology toward equity and sustainability. She is an assistant professor at Ain Shams University in Cairo, Egypt, and is also affiliated with the Technical university of Munich, and Impact Circles e.V., and the Center for Advanced Internet Studies in Germany, and the University of California, Santa Cruz. Hendawy received her Ph.D. in 2021 from the Faculty of Planning, Building Environment at TU Berlin in Germany, graded summa cum laude. In her dissertation, she explored the mediatization of urban development in Cairo as a local yet global case. In 2015, Hendawy completed an MSc in Integrated Urbanism and Sustainable Design from Stuttgart University, focusing on urban policies. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Architectural Engineering from Ain Shams University in Cairo, Department of Urban Planning and Design, class of 2012. Hendawy is one of the founding members of Cairo Urban AI, a project exploring the potential of using artificial intelligence to develop just and sustainable cities. She was the principal investigator of the Urban AI MOOC, which is part of the African Cities Lab initiative, funded by the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs.
Scott Lyon (Advisor) is the Founder and CEO of Solace, the leading provider of AI spiritual agents and virtual faith spaces to the religious vertical. He focuses on creating digital tools that enhance spiritual engagement for diverse cross-faith communities. A graduate of Stanford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholarship finalist, and Harvard Business School, Scott has been instrumental in prototyping AI models that integrate denominational texts and theological commentary, making spiritual content more personalized and accessible. His work bridges traditional religious practices with modern digital expressions of faith, fostering inclusivity and authentic pathways for spiritual discovery. Previously, he was part of the founding teams behind Cars.com and BankMobile and delivered a TED talk on the future of spirituality.
Jon Palmer (Advisor) serves as General Counsel at Microsoft and leads the Corporate Legal Affairs department. He oversees the company’s core legal and compliance functions related to litigation, employment, competition, immigration, corporate governance, mergers & acquisitions, intellectual property, and internal investigations.
Previously, Jon was a Litigation Partner at Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP and Heller Ehrman LLP. From 2005 to 2008 he was based in Asia, where he was Managing Partner for Heller Ehrman’s offices in Hong Kong, Singapore, Beijing, and Shanghai.
Jon has an active pro bono practice, focusing on immigration and political asylum issues. He is a passionate advocate for legal reform—particularly in the areas of civil justice reform and alternative dispute resolution. He sits on the Board of Directors of Lawyers for Civil Justice and the International Institute for Conflict Prevention & Resolution (CPR Institute). Jon received his BA from Stanford University and his JD from University of California, Berkeley.
Eric Glen Weyl (Advisor) is Founder and Research Lead of the Microsoft Research Special Project the Plural Technology Collaboratory, Founder of the RadicalxChange Foundation, the leading think tank in the Web3 space, and Founder and Chair of the Plurality Institute, which coordinates an academic research network developing technology for cooperation across difference. He is also Senior Advisor to the GETTING-Plurality Research Network at Harvard University. He previously led Web3 technical strategy at Microsoft’s Office of the Chief Technology Officer, was Co-Chair and Technical Lead of the Harvard Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics Rapid Response Task Force on Covid-19, whose recommendations were endorsed by a dozen leading civil Society organizations and the Biden Campaign and taught economics at the University of Chicago, Yale, Princeton and Harvard.
He is coauthor with Taiwan’s 1st Digital Minister Audrey Tang and a community of dozens of global collaborators of the world’s first fully open-source, copyright free and collaboratively governed book ⿻ 數位 Plurality: The Future of Collaborative Technology and Democracy, (which has been endorsed by leaders ranging from the Dalai Lama to Vitalik Buterin), with Eric Posner of the 2018 Radical Markets: Uprooting Capitalism and Democracy for a Just Society (a 2018 Economist Book of the Year), and with Puja Ohlhaver and Vitalik Buterin of the 2022 paper “Decentralized Society: Finding Web3’s Soul” (which is one of the 30 most downloaded papers of all time on the Social Science Research network). He is Executive Producer of “”Good Enough Ancestor””, a documentary of the life of Audrey Tang. He is also the author of dozens of scholarly and popular articles in journals including the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Economic Review, the Harvard Law Review, the Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Economics and Computation and the New York Times.
He has been recognized as one of the 10 most influential people in blockchain by CoinDesk, as one of the 25 people shaping the next 25 years of technology by WIRED and as one of the 50 most influential people by Bloomberg Businessweek, all in 2018. He graduated as Valedictorian of his Princeton undergraduate class in 2007 and received his PhD in economics also from Princeton in 2008.
