Joan Ai ’94

Joan Ai is a purpose-driven social impact leader with extensive cross-sector experience with leading global institutions in corporate purpose and philanthropy, innovation and technology, think tanks, international agencies and nonprofits. She is the Co-Founder of Blanchard House Institute.

Joan provides global institutions with strategic counsel and targeted solutions for building long term partnerships; and leverages emerging technologies to meet competitive corporate social goals and achieve stakeholder purpose, equality, scale and sustainability. She is adept at convening and mobilizing high-level executives in the corporate and start-up ecosystems as well as civic, academic and community leaders by designing and directing narratives across various industries for public-private-philanthropic partnerships to promote interdisciplinary and multi-stakeholder collaboration to effectively address the most pressing global challenges.

She has driven global initiatives for leading institutions including Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, NYU Steinhardt EdTech Incubator, World Economic Forum (seconded by DQ Institute), World Childhood Foundation, Schmidt Futures and Comic Relief US. Joan was a co-chair of the Ethically Aligned Design for Parenting Committee of The IEEE Global Initiative on Ethics of Autonomous and Intelligent Systems and serves on a task force to develop an alumni community for Fellows of the World Economic Forum.

She serves on the New York Advisory Council for Common Sense Media and is co-chair of the Collegiate School’s Parent Annual Fund.

Joan served as the secretariat for the Coalition for Digital Intelligence comprised of DQ Institute, IEEE SA and OECD in association with the World Economic Forum with the aim of setting a global framework for digital intelligence which includes a common set of definitions, language and understanding of comprehensive digital literacy and skills that can be adopted by nations worldwide. She served on the United Nations Broadband Commission Working Group on Child Safety Online. She was part of the inaugural class of fellows for New America’s Us@250 Initiative.