Payal Arora
Payal Arora is Professor at Utrecht University and Founder of the Inclusive AI Lab, where she challenges doomsday narratives in AI and advocates for reclaiming techno-optimism grounded in empirical work across the Global South. She argues that hope is a moral imperative in shaping AI futures, and that pessimism is a position of privilege. She is the author of 100+ articles and award-winning books includingThe Next Billion Users (Harvard) and From Pessimism to Promise (MIT). Named among the 100 Brilliant Women in AI Ethics 2025, she won the 2025 Women in AI Benelux Award for Diversifying AI and was nominated for the 2026 Global Landscapes Forum's "8 Women with a New Vision for the Earth." She received special recognition from the Justitia Awards 2026 by The Women in Law Initiative. Forbes calls her the "next billion champion" and the "right kind of person to reform tech." Her work has been covered by 250+ outlets including the Financial Times, Wired, and The Economist. She serves on boards including the UN's EGOV and has consulted for Google, Adobe, Spotify, KPMG, and others. She has delivered 350+ keynotes across 85 countries, including TEDx talks. She is a Harvard, Columbia, and Rockefeller Bellagio Fellow alumni, and lives in Amsterdam.