Podcasts about global development lab

Mohamed Abdel-Kader, Chief Innovation Officer at USAID and Alexis Bonnell, Former Chief Innovation Officer at USAID, discussed the impact of AI and other machine learning tools. They explored the balance between the risks and rewards associated with these tools, reaching a consensus that AI can revolutionize USAID's impact when appropriately developed and utilized. The discussion emphasized the importance of developing AI to benefit all countries where USAID is active, not just English-speaking nations. Recognizing the rapid advancement of machine learning, the speakers stressed the need for precision and thoughtfulness in posing questions to AI, given its evolving nature. They also addressed issues of localization, pointing out the challenges when native languages are overlooked or when communities lack access to computers. Mike highlighted upcoming events for those interested in collaborating with USAID. On February 15th, SID-US will host its annual career fair, followed by the annual conference on April 26th in Washington, DC. He expressed his belief that this conference is a must-attend event of the year. IN THIS EPISODE: [01:53] Mike Shanley introduces today's guests and shares their backgrounds. [02:53] Mohamed describes his role at USAID as Chief Innovation Officer and talks about how technology is advancing with the advent of machine learning tools. [6:30] Mohamed touches on some of the early-use cases that he's seen of AI applications or other technologies. [12:47] Mohamed reflects on the potential risks AI presents and whether the good outweighs the bad.  [17:04] Alexis comments that we are navigating at a different rate of change in technology; therefore, we need to be intentional about how we use AI, and she provides an example of an experiment she led.  [26:08] Mohamed discusses the ethical development of AI, strengthening policies and systems that govern AI and accessing computing power in parts of the world where it's cost-prohibitive.  [31:38] Alexis discusses how the cultures and identities of different countries impact how you work with them. She describes a sector who asked themselves if they have been as innovative as they think they have been and how AI revealed a surprising result to their question. [38:42] Mohamad discusses the significance of localization in AI, emphasizing the interconnected nature of our world and the necessity of incorporating it into our AI tools. He notes that numerous countries are enthusiastic about AI, viewing it as a tool to propel their advancement. [46:00] Alexis says that there's a gold mine for all of the entities to bring unique applications to USAID, suggesting you can recycle or reuse proposals.  [52:34] The panelists leave advice to the listeners.  KEY TAKEAWAYS: Led by Mohamed Abdel-Kader, USAID's Innovation, Technology, and Research Hub, formerly known as the Global Development Lab, team is behind cutting edge tech development and approaches within the digital space. USAID strives to reach more people through innovative and cost effective approaches from cybersecurity, to emerging technologies like artificial intelligence, digital finance, digital inclusion, and digital literacy. AI is an extremely powerful tool that is evolving and changing daily. With this, comes the risk that a lot of people will be left behind. But there's also tremendous opportunity in the AI space. USAID actively works to intentionally shape this technology to be useful for everyone, while exploring the practicalities of how they might achieve this goal.  USAID plays a unique role in fostering the ethical development of AI and other tools through various approaches. Mohamed and his team focus on utilizing the powerful tool of AI responsibly in environments where there are a lot of vulnerable people. USAID takes an ecosystem approach to discern how AI as a tool sits in the broader digital ecosystem within USAID's partner countries and how USAID can support the responsible use of AI and continue to shape that global agenda. They do this by strengthening the underlying policies and systems and civil society environment that shapes how AI is designed, developed, and deployed in partner countries, including the quality and representative data sets that are used to build these particular tools. RESOURCES: Aid Market Podcast Aid Market Podcast YouTube Mike Shanley - LinkedIn Mohamed Abdel-Kader LinkedIn Alexis Bonnell LinkedIn Co-host Society for International Development-US USAID_Digital Twitter USAID Twitter USAID Innovates Twitter BIOGRAPHIES: Mohamed Abdel-Kader serves as USAID's Chief Innovation Officer and Executive Director of the Innovation, Technology, and Research Hub. In these roles, he oversees various Agency mechanisms to promote the application of innovation, technology, and research for greater aid effectiveness within USAID and the inter-agency, and with our partners in the international development community, private sector, and civil society. Prior to USAID, Mohamed advised companies, leading NGOs and multilateral organizations, foundations and educational institutions, and government agencies in addressing their most pressing challenges. He served in the Obama administration as Deputy Assistant Secretary for International and Foreign Language Education in the U.S. Department of Education and later led the Aspen Institute's Stevens Initiative, an international ed-tech program. He has also served several postsecondary institutions in international strategy and major gift fundraising roles. A speaker of fluent Arabic and basic Spanish, Mohamed is a Truman National Security Fellow, an Eisenhower Fellow, and the author of a children's book about stereotypes. He holds a Bachelor's degree from Clemson University, a Master's degree in Higher Education from Vanderbilt University, and an MBA from Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business. He is also a trustee of the Longview Foundation for International Education & World Affairs.   Alexis Bonnell is the Chief Information Officer and Director of the Digital Capabilities Directorate of the Air Force Research Laboratory, the primary scientific research and development center for the Department of the Air Force. She is responsible for developing and executing the AFRL Information Technology strategy, leading the strategic development of highly advanced next generation technologies and platforms for AFRL. Her focus includes catalyzing the discovery, development, and integration of warfighting technologies for air, space, and cyberspace forces via digital capabilities, IT infrastructure and technological innovation across the lab's operations and culture. She was one of the first employees of the Internet Trade Association, contributing to the early development and growth of the digital landscape. She has served in challenging environments, including warzones with the United Nations to support over $1B of critical DOD operations in Afghanistan, Iraq and many other operational theaters. She has contributed to dual-use technology and innovation culture across the DOD Innovation community including: AFWERX, AFRL, Kessel Run, NavalX, Marine Innovation Unit, Army Futures Command, DIU, Army Software Factory, DARPA and more. Prior to her current position, she was the Emerging Technology Evangelist at Google, driving the use of emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, cyber security/zero trust, API First, Big Data, Cloud Computing, and others to drive efficiency and innovation within government organizations, including tackling digital transformation in defense, healthcare, education, COVID response, natural disasters, supply chain, system/process modernization, hybrid workforce and more. Bonnell co-founded the Global Development Lab, the premier innovation lab of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), leveraging Global Allied Nation partnerships in Science, Technology, and Innovation, reviewing over 25,000 game changing innovations and technologies, funding 1,200 of them. She served as USAID's Chief Innovation Officer, receiving the first 10/10 for innovation in the Results For America Rankings. She was named in the Fed 100 in 2020. She also assisted with major platform and technology transitions, drove hybrid work adoption, countering malign nation initiatives and global cyber security programming.

VR Small, is the founder and chief executive officer for the Veteran Women's Enterprise Center (VWEC), a national initiative launched in southern Dallas.  VR testified for the original House Bill to make June 12, Women Veterans Day in Texas.  This year, VR led the launched of the first annual statewide Women Veterans Day Pitch Competition highlighting the innovations and economic impact of current/potential women veteran entrepreneurs.  VR serves on the Advisory Committee for TWU's Center for Women Entrepreneurs and is a fellow of SMU's Hunt Institute for Engineering and Humanity—Inclusive Economy, Dallas Public Voices, the Bush Institute Stand-to-Veteran Leadership Program and is featured in Dallas Innovates: The Future 50 North Texans.  VR is the SBA's DFW District 2020 Veterans Small Business Advocate of the Year and serves on the 30th Congressional District Veteran Advisory Committee and supports the efforts of various local veteran coalitions and service organizations. Ms. Small chaired the Veteran Business Subcommittee for the City of Dallas, Office of Business Diversity and was the 2017 VP for Veteran Affairs with SCORE Dallas.  In alignment with the VWEC's mission, VR just completed phase one of the Moments That Matter Research Project exclusively focused on women veteran owned businesses in the DFW metroplex with the Dallas Federal Reserve Bank and has currently launched phase two with SMU's Hunt Institute, Global Development Lab to conduct a series of national focus groups.Most importantly, VR is a Navy Veteran, proud stepdaughter, and sister to U.S. Army Retired Vietnam & Iraq Veterans, respectively. Living her personal slogan “Changing the way we see the world and do business,” VR is a motivational speakers, moderator, educator and advocate specifically for women veteran as well as women and small businesses in general—driving social and economic change across our nation. https://www.womenveteransec.orgSupport the show

What is mission of the U.S. Global Development Lab within USAID? How is it using innovation, technology, and research in international development? What is next for the U.S. Global Development Lab? Join host Michael Keegan as he explores these questions and more with Harry Bader, acting executive director, U.S. Global Development Lab within USAID.

What is mission of U.S. Global Development Lab within USAID? How is it using innovation, technology, and research in international development? What is next for the U.S. Global Development Lab? Join host Michael Keegan as he explores these questions and more with Harry Bader, Acting Executive Director, U.S. Global Development Lab within USAID. Listen to […]

Brianna Beiler graduated from Pepperdine University '19 with a double-major in International Studies (Political Studies) and Hispanic Studies. Upon graduation, she was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to teach English in a rural village in South Korea. When the Fulbright Program was prematurely suspended nine months later due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Brianna was fortunate to accept a position with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the federal government agency responsible for administering civilian foreign aid and development assistance, and the world's premier international development agency, which acts as a catalytic actor driving development results. Brianna works in communications in the U.S. Global Development Lab of the USAID, a bureau which focuses on fostering greater innovation and effectiveness in the U.S. government’s administration of global humanitarian aid. To connect with Bri with any questions, reach her at beiler.bri@gmail.com Follow the What Fulfills You? Podcast Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/whatfulfillsyoupod/ Follow Emily Elizabeth's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/emilyeduong/ ( https://www.instagram.com/emilyeduong ) Read more on the blog: https://emilyelizabeth.blog/ Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/what-fulfills-you-podcast/donations Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Alex Dehgan is the CEO of Conservation X Labs, an innovation and technology startup focused on ending human-induced extinction. Alex recently served as the Chief Scientist at the U.S. Agency for International Development and helped launch the Global Development Lab there. In this wide-ranging conversation, Alex, Thane, and Don discuss how to prevent future pandemics, Alex’s recent book “The Snow Leopard Project: And Other Adventures in Warzone Conservation,” the media’s role in conservation, the power of citizen science, and numerous examples of how Conservation X is accelerating conservation.

Guest Bio: Kate Gage spent eight years working in the Obama Administration both in the White House Office of Science & Technology Policy as a Senior Policy Advisor and at the U.S. Agency for International Development. At USAID she helped create the U.S. Global Development Lab to develop and scale global development and humanitarian technologies. She is also Co-founder and Executive Director of Lab 736, which embeds experienced engineers and designers in state level Democratic political organizations. Kate was the Chief Operations Officer of the March for Science in 2017, and Chief of Staff for the March for Our Lives in 2018, working with the students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School where 17 students were killed in February 2018. Kate is also a founding partner for The Movement Cooperative.

Ann Mei Chang talks to Ravi and Grant about her new book, ‘Lean Impact: How to Innovate for Radically Greater Social Good.’ Her career spans both the private and public sector: she led USAID’s first-ever innovation hub, the Global Development Lab, and she spent almost a decade as senior engineering director at Google, before she left Silicon Valley for the State Department, where she was a senior advisor for women and technology. Ann Mei Chang shares her lessons learned through this journey, and discusses how to use a Silicon Valley style of iterative innovation in the global development sector.  Displaced is produced by the Vox Media Podcast Network in partnership with the International Rescue Committee. Find our show notes here: www.rescue.org/displaced. Rate and review the show, or email us at displaced@rescue.org Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On May 31, the Justice Sector Training, Research and Coordination Program and the U.S. Institute of Peace hosted a symposium to tackle the difficult questions of how technology can be used to strengthen rule of law, security, community engagement, and relationships between states and the people they serve in developing and conflict-affected areas. Welcoming Remarks Nancy LindborgPresident, United States Institute of Peace Harry BaderActing Executive Director, U.S. Global Development Lab, U.S. Agency for International Development Hamid KhanDeputy Director, Rule of Law Collaborative, University of South Carolina Session One: Innovations in Law Enforcement: Digital Investigative Analysis & Forensic Science: Advances and Setbacks Lindsay Freeman, ModeratorHuman Rights Center Research Fellow, School of Law, University of California, Berkeley Mark D. MogleDeputy Assistant Director for Forensics, International Criminal Investigative Training Assistance Program, U.S. Department of Justice Mark GrantzAssistant to the Special Agent in Charge, Washington Field Office, U.S. Secret Service Joe VaraniDigital Investigative Analyst, Cybercrime Lab, U.S. Department of Justice For more information about this event, please visit: https://www.usip.org/events/innovation-and-technology-rule-law-programming

Patrick Fine, Chief Executive Officer, FHI 360, examines the Sustainable Development Goals in conversations with local development experts. In this episode, Patrick speaks with Ann Mei Chang about the vital role of innovation in meeting the SDGs and how emerging technologies and a rapidly changing workforce will affect how we move forward. Ms. Chang was a Google engineer with more than 20 years of experience in Silicon Valley before serving as the Chief Innovation Officer for the U.S. Agency for International Development and the first Executive Director of the U.S. Global Development Lab. FHI 360's Chief Executive Officer, Patrick Fine, hosts conversations with creative thinkers, respected leaders and local actors who are at the forefront of human development and who bring diverse perspectives to timely, high-stakes and sometimes controversial issues affecting people around the world.

Alex is the CEO and co-founder of Conservation X Labs, a startup for tech innovation for conservation and development.  Prior to founding Conservation X Labs Alex served as the Chief Scientist at USAID and founded the Global Development Lab.  Conservation X Labs aims to harness exponential technologies, open innovation, and entrepreneurship to dramatically improve the efficacy, scale and sustainability of conservation efforts...

International development actors are taking cues from Silicon Valley’s boom to improve their ability to better serve the world’s most disadvantaged, transforming development in the 21st century. Technology, science and innovation are key to discovering new solutions to long-standing problems. Cutting-edge data techniques can help us measure the impact of interventions, continually improving services and scaling proven solutions to reach hundreds of millions of people. Leading technology firms are also major philanthropists, providing both financial resources and technical expertise to support development innovations. By partnering together, alongside other non-traditional stakeholders, we can achieve what human progress has only now made possible — the end of extreme poverty by 2030. How can development interventions become more adaptive and transparent? In what ways could shifting the culture of the way development organizations do business make them more responsive to beneficiary needs? How can we include local innovators and their contextual knowledge? Join us on for a discussion with Ann Mei Chang, Chief Innovation Officer and Executive Director of the Global Development Lab, a new entity within USAID at the forefront of these breakthrough solutions, and Jacquelline Fuller, the Director of Google.org, which provides over $100 million yearly to support innovators using technology for humanity. Speakers Ann Mei Chang is the Chief Innovation Officer and Executive Director of the US Global Development Lab at USAID and Jacquelline Fuller is the Director of Google.org. The conversation is moderated by Scott Wu, Partner and Head of Investments, Omidyar Network. For more information about this event please visit: http://www.worldaffairs.org/event-calendar/event/1649

There is no shortage of talk about innovation in the aid and development space - but how much of this talk has actually moved beyond small scale piloting programs into standard operations for funders and implementors? My unscientific read from the field continues to say "not much," especially in the case of large-scale implementors. Like any established system or process, fundamentally shifting the way business is done takes both time and unwavering leadership. The US Global Development Lab at USAID seeks to be a mechanism for taking ideas to change-making action. As explained by Alexis Bonnell, my guest on the 124th Terms of Reference Podcast, the Lab seeks to be a catalyst for nothing less than "the transformation of the development enterprise by opening development to people everywhere with good ideas, promoting new and deepening existing partnerships, bringing data and evidence to bear, and harnessing scientific and technological advances." Alexis is the Division Chief in Applied Innovation and Acceleration for The Lab. As you've come to expect from TOR guests, she is definitely someone to listen to: she has developed and delivered over a billion dollars of humanitarian and development programming in over 25 conflict, post-conflict, and emergency countries, in almost every sector from education to stabilization, for more than 30 International Bi-lateral donors, 10 UN agencies, the military, and the private sector.

Over the past fifteen years, the demand for humanitarian aid has increased dramatically. The world currently spends $25 billion to provide assistance to 125 million people, and according to a UN High-Level Panel on Humanitarian Financing, another $15 billion is required to adequately meet the needs of those affected by violent conflict, natural disaster, demographic shifts and rapid urbanization, among other circumstances. As a result, the humanitarian sector is undergoing a period of self-reflection with the first-ever World Humanitarian Summit to be held in Istanbul, Turkey in May 2016. What has been learned and where is the sector heading? What is the role of public, private and social sector actors in filling the gaps in aid? And what is the unique role of philanthropy in both addressing the root causes of humanitarian crises and increasing the pool of available resources? GUY CAVE Managing Director, Geneva Global @GuyCave2 HADEEL IBRAHIM Executive Director, Mo Ibrahim Foundation @Mo_IbrahimFdn LONA STOLL Acting Deputy Director for the Global Development Lab at USAID @lonastoll MODERATOR: PETER LAUGHARN President and CEO, Conrad N. Hilton Foundation @peter_laugharn For more information about this conference please visit: https://philanthropyforum.org/conference/gpf-2016/

Alexis Bonnell from USAID’s Global Development Lab talks about how innovation is changing the way development work is done around the world, harnessing 21st century technology to create more development impact, and how some of the most effective innovation tools can be both simple and inexpensive. Bonnell also talks about what it takes to have a successful career in international development today.

Today on Through the Noise we bring you collaborators from different parts of the development world -- Alexis Bonnell from USAID, who is an "Innovation Evaganelist" and Steven O'Connor, Communications Director of DAI -- an employee owned global development firm. Ms. Bonnell is part of USAID's new Global Development Lab which is undertaking the challenge of eradicating extreme poverty by 2030. Technological advancements have made unprecedented changes possible while harnessing the collective brilliance of humanity. Listen up to learn more about their plans to change the world and maybe some of the strategies they emply will be useful in your own work. Alexis Bonnell is the Head of Applied Innovation at USAID and is focused on harnessing innovation to address humanities greatest challenges. Alexis has delivered over one billion dollars in development and humanitarian programming in over 25 countries, working with over 200 partners across all sectors of aid. USAID is the lead U.S. Government agency that works to end extreme global poverty and enable resilient, democratic societies to realize their potential. Steven O'Connor is DAI's Senior Director for Corporate Communications. He oversees internal and external communications for the company, which currently employs some 2,500 people on 150 projects in 92 countries. DAI is an employee-owned international development company dedicated to shaping a more livable world.

On September 4th 2015, SIMLab hosted a Brown Bag Lunch at the OpenGov Hub in DC, an informal session for colleagues in the technology and development community. Our panel explored the mobile money space from all perspectives: community-level implementation, programs, technology and international policy. We were delighted to be joined by Kay McGowen, Digital Finance Team Lead at USAID’s Global Development Lab; Leo Tobias, Technology Team Manager at the Grameen Foundation; Sean McDonald, CEO of FrontlineSMS and myself Kelly Church, Project Director of the Credit project at SIMLab with crafty moderation by Laura Walker McDonald, SIMLab’s CEO. The discussion is available for download as a podcast, and we expect the insights gained will be valuable for the international development and tech community for practitioners and beyond. Releasing the event as a podcast is an experiment in providing resources for the community that live on beyond the work itself - let us know what you think in the comments!