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.
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.
Mala Kumar is a global leader in social impact / technology for social good with deep expertise in UX research and design, open source software, and artificial intelligence. Throughout her 15+ year career, she has led groundbreaking initiatives that have reached 50,000+ people globally. Mala joined Humane Intelligence in March 2025 as the Head of Impact. Previously, she was the Director of Program Management, AI Safety at MLCommons, where she was part of the core team that launched its inaugural AI safety benchmark. Prior, she was the Director of Tech for Social Good at GitHub, where she created five cutting-edge programs that leveraged the company’s core products, services, and communities. Mala spent the year after and the decade prior to GitHub working at the United Nations, in INGOs and the private sector, in both English and French. She has lived and worked extensively in four continents. Separate from her tech work, Mala is the author of two novels. Her second, What it Meant to Survive, was published on October 1, 2024. She lives in New York City.
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.
Sarah Amos is a former journalist turned product leader specializing in AI-enabled technologies that detect and mitigate online harms. With over a decade of experience at the intersection of technology, media and social impact, she has shaped how major platforms and institutions respond to emerging information as well as disinformation and manipulation in the digital age. As a Product Manager for Twitter's Civic Integrity team, she developed features to promote information integrity during global elections. Previously, at Dataminr, she founded and led the Domain Expert R&D Department, growing from an analyst role to leading a team of 15 experts building AI systems for breaking news detection. Her work served both the private and public sector, including the US Department of State, and international organizations including the UN and NATO. A graduate of Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service, Sarah found her passion for storytelling and social change while reporting during the Egyptian revolution, with a focus on women's voices during times of transformation.
Julie Krugler Hollek is an Engineering Manager at Humane Intelligence. She is a data practitioner with a background in Data Science, trust and safety, and open source scientific computing. She is currently serving on the NumFOCUS board of directors and is the co-chair of the SciPy Conference. In previous roles, Julie was the Director of Data Science at Mozilla where she led the DS organization, set strategic direction, and managed budgets. At Twitter, she built the Health Data Science team and is a subject matter expert at the intersection where trust and safety meets data. In 2023, Julie was a Governance in Online Speech Leadership Series Fellow. Throughout her career, Julie has been committed to improving diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging by community-building. She founded Neustar Women in Technology, supporting women technologists both internally and externally; was a PyLadies San Francisco organizer; co-founded MozAPI, the Asian Pacific Islander employee resource group at Mozilla; and previously served on NumFOCUS' Diversity & Inclusion in Scientific Computing (DISC) committee. Julie earned her Ph.D. in Astronomy from the University of Texas at Austin.
Akash Kundu is a Red Teaming Data Scientist at Humane Intelligence, where he oversees post-red teaming event analysis and reporting. He has contributed to Technical AI Safety research, focusing on LLM evaluations, as a research fellow at Apart Research, co-authoring papers accepted at AAAI and reviewed favourably at ICLR. Akash has also explored prompt biases and Constitutional AI as a research intern at the University of South Carolina, aligning with his commitment to responsible AI practices. Prior to joining Humane Intelligence, he interned at Lionheart Ventures, where his findings on systemic AI risks informed internal due diligence to prioritize funding for high-impact AI organizations. He also volunteered as an ML Engineer at Omdena, working on projects such as estimating out-of-pocket lung cancer costs in the US, developing a mental health chatbot in Swahili and English for Tanzania, and building a deepfake detection system in Germany. Passionate about addressing risks from AI, Akash is committed to advancing responsible AI through global collaboration and research.
Kristi Arbogast is the Developer Relations Lead at Humane Intelligence, where she bridges technical and non-technical audiences to advance AI model evaluation. She collaborates with engineers to refine platform functionality, translates user feedback into product improvements, and develops educational resources on AI assessment methods. Previously, she conducted open source intelligence (OSINT) and content moderation investigations into generative AI harms at Graphika. She also worked on information integrity, elections, and trust and safety at the National Democratic Institute, where she escalated account protections and policy concerns to major tech platforms, including for Ukrainian organizations in the midst of Russia’s 2022 invasion. She has also held roles at Access Now and OpenGov Hub, focusing on digital rights, transparency, and community engagement. Kristi holds an M.A. in Media and Public Affairs from The George Washington University.
