Team

Dr. Rumman Chowdhury’s passion lies at the intersection of artificial intelligence and humanity. She is a pioneer in the field of applied algorithmic ethics, creating cutting-edge socio-technical solutions for ethical, explainable and transparent AI. She is CEO and co-founder of Humane Intelligence, and the first person to be appointed by the Department of State as the United States Science Envoy for Artificial Intelligence. Previously, Dr. Chowdhury was the Director of META (ML Ethics, Transparency, and Accountability) team at Twitter, leading a team of applied researchers and engineers to identify and mitigate algorithmic harms on the platform. Prior to Twitter, she was CEO and founder of Parity, an enterprise algorithmic audit platform company. She formerly served as Global Lead for Responsible AI at Accenture Applied Intelligence. In her work as Accenture’s Responsible AI lead, she led the design of the Fairness Tool, a first-in-industry algorithmic tool to identify and mitigate bias in AI systems. She is an active contributor to discourse around responsible technology with bylines in the Atlantic, Forbes, Harvard Business Review, Sloan Management Review, MIT Technology Review and Wired. Dr. Chowdhury holds two undergraduate degrees from MIT, a master's degree in Quantitative Methods of the Social Sciences from Columbia University, and a doctorate in political science from the University of California, San Diego.

Theodora (Theo) Skeadas is the Chief of Staff with Humane Intelligence. She has a background in AI governance and online safety, and has worked with other organizations including National Democratic Institute on online gender-based violence and gendered disinformation, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace's Partnership for Countering Influence Operations on government efforts to combat disinformation, Partnership on AI on responsible AI, Effective Institutions Project on forecasting and philanthropy in AI, the Committee to Protect Journalists on a journalist safety tool, and Domelabs AI on AI in healthcare and national security. Previously at Twitter, she managed the Trust and Safety Council, a research hub within the Public Policy team, and a trusted flaggers program for human rights defenders, and she supported Twitter's global civic integrity, transparency, and crisis response efforts. Before, she worked in national security at Booz Allen Hamilton, examining public sentiment, social movements, and disinformation using social media for the U.S. Federal Government. Previously, she worked with nonprofits in Morocco (Search for Common Ground, Innovations for Poverty Action, Sidi Moumen Cultural Center, and Sister Cities International - Africa), Turkey (Fulbright), Greece (Center for Hellenic Studies), and Costa Rica (World Teach). She has an MPP from the Harvard Kennedy School and a BA from Harvard College. She has language experience in French, Modern Greek, Modern Standard Arabic, Modern Turkish, Moroccan Arabic, and Spanish.

Jonathan Jin is the Engineering Advisor for Humane Intelligence. He is a machine learning systems engineer with extensive experience in developing highly reliable and scalable infrastructure for production machine learning at companies such as Spotify, NVIDIA, and Twitter. He has also worked on site reliability and observability infrastructure at Uber. He is currently a Staff Machine Learning Engineer at Hinge. He has a BS in computer science and a BA in economics from the University of Chicago.

Maria di Fonzo is the Communications Lead with Humane Intelligence. She is an accomplished marketing and communications professional focused on engaging multicultural audiences through impactful work on social and digital platforms. Mission-driven both personally and professionally, her strategic perspective has earned her opportunities to work on national and global campaigns, helping clients of all sizes achieve their goals in the corporate, agency, and non-profit sectors. Maria has managed and inspired multidisciplinary teams around the globe to help find safe vaccines against COVID-19 with the Coronavirus Prevention Network and HIV with the HIV Vaccine Trials Network. She has worked with the San Francisco Department of Health, Nissan North America, Infiniti, Ford Motor Company, Ferrero (Nutella, Kinder, Tic Tac, Raffaello), and Amazon, among others. Additionally, she has contributed to national and global partnerships with prominent entities such as the UEFA Champions League, Manchester City, the BET Awards, the Latin Grammys, Disney, and the Mexican National Team, among others. Maria has a 6-year Communications degree from the University of Buenos Aires and she has language experience in Spanish, French and Italian.

Tajia Harlem is the Operations Lead with Humane Intelligence. She is a former Beauty CEO, turned passionate Virtual Business Manager, Tajia transitioned her career path upon the birth of her son. While her beauty business continues to thrive in stores, she now focuses on supporting multiple businesses with her extensive expertise and business acumen under her consulting company "Knot Baad Solutions.” Her team of three offers extensive virtual business services ranging from website design to administrative needs. She personally specializes in helping small businesses and individuals achieve optimum efficiency and growth. She thrives on collaborating with passionate leaders, creative minds, and strategic thinkers. Her strengths lie in taking initiative, multi-tasking, and ensuring follow-through. As a problem solver and project manager, she brings several years of administrative, management, and supervisory experience to the table. She is committed to efficiency and organization, with strong analytical writing, customer service, and research skills. She embraces challenges and values the opportunity to exceed expectations.

Sara Kingsley is a Data Scientist Advisor with Humane Intelligence, and a PhD Researcher at Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Computer Science, where she is advised by Dr. Beibei Li and Dr. Jeffrey P. Bigham. Sara is an expert in red teaming foundation AI models, and designing methods and software to investigate the safety and risks of AI/ML systems, digital platforms, and online markets, including for unlawful and discriminatory practices. As part of this work, for various Big Tech partners, she has red teamed and built automatic red teaming systems to evaluate the safety of industry foundation models. Before starting her PhD, Sara previously was appointed by President Barack H. Obama to serve in the U.S. Department of Labor as a Legislative Officer for the Office of Congressional and Intergovernmental Affairs (OCIA). In this role, Sara was responsible for communications between the U.S. Department of Labor and the U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives. She also designed an award-winning information management system for her agency, resulting in recognition from the U.S. Secretary of Labor. After her time serving in the federal government, Sara worked for Microsoft Corporation where she worked for the Chief Legal Officer conducting research on the economic impact of technology and technology policy, and for the Chief Economist, where she helped to deploy and evaluate Wi-Fi networks around the world.

Patrick McEnaney is a Senior Software Engineer at Humane Intelligence. He is a full-stack developer with skills in React, Next.js, Vue.js, Node.js, Ruby, and Ruby on Rails. He builds web features and relevant products for businesses. In the past 15 years, he has acquired teamwork, problem-solving, and exceptional communication skills from coding with full-stack development colleagues around the world. As a creative developer, he is motivated by the rigorous, logical, thought processes combining software development with imagination and expression. He has a. Bachelor of Applied Science in Computer Science from University of Michigan, and a Master's degree in Computer Software Engineering from Michigan Technological University. In his free time, he enjoys reading and creative writing, particularly short fiction. He also greatly enjoys video games, game design, and development.

Nicole Osayande is a Data Scientist at Humane Intelligence, with a background in statistical machine learning and responsible AI. She was previously a graduate researcher at Mila AI Institute, and a Software Engineer at IBM Canada. Nicole has led various sociotechnical projects that investigate fairness, accountability, transparency, and ethical considerations in AI systems. Nicole was invited by Technovation Montreal, in collaboration with the US Consulate General and Microsoft, to curate and facilitate a workshop series educating young girls about the advancements and risks of DeepFake AI and emerging technologies. She also acts as an advisory board member of a gender equality project with the Global Partnership on AI. Nicole is currently the AI Safety & Impact Manager at Canadian Tire Corp.

Anushe Sheikh is a Researcher on the AI Metrology working group at Humane Intelligence. She holds a degree in Computer Science from Wellesley College, and began her career at Google as part of the Associate Product Manager (APM) program. She was previously on YouTube and Google’s Responsible AI team, focusing on GenAI safety evaluation data tooling, analysis, and infrastructure. Her work involved close collaboration with modeling and product teams to develop red-teaming strategies, benchmarks, and safety evaluations to enable the responsible deployment of AI. Prior to Google, she worked with non-profits in Greece, Lebanon, and Uganda to support refugee resettlement and education. 

Pallav Agrawal is an Engineering Lead with a background in building and scaling AI-powered products across various industries. Pallav is an experienced leader in artificial intelligence and machine learning with five years hands-on experience as an IC and over eight years of experience managing diverse teams of data scientists, researchers, engineers, product managers, and UX researchers. His expertise spans information retrieval, natural language processing, graph neural networks, forecasting, and signal processing. Pallav has been spearheading efforts at Harvard Business School to develop AI-powered virtual tutors, and grading/feedback agents. These tutors/agents are designed to enhance learning experiences for students from various backgrounds, aligning with the school's content and teaching methodologies. Previously, Pallav led Amazon’s search trust and safety team, where he successfully reduced harmful search practices using innovative AI technologies. This significantly improved user experience and trust in the platform. Pallav recently moved to Pittsburgh, PA from his long-time home in Oakland, CA, with his wife, a two year old son and two cats. 

Adarsh Jha is an emerging Software Engineer from India with a strong passion for the MERN Stack, Next.js, and integrating GenAI with web applications. Currently in his third year as a Computer Science undergraduate, Adarsh has already gained valuable experience by working with an Indian startup, where he contributed to developing an AI-powered career roadmap generator. While still early in his professional journey, Adarsh has been consistently building and refining his own projects, showcasing his dedication and enthusiasm for the field.