Speaker Series on Artificial Intelligence: Reshaping Global Work

About the Speakers:

Iqbal Dhaliwal, Global Executive Director of J-PAL and Co-Chair of the Partnership for AI Evidence

Iqbal Singh Dhaliwal is the Global Executive Director of J-PAL, leading its global strategy, research, and policy outreach across seven regional offices. He co-directs J-PAL South Asia and co-chairs the Partnership for AI Evidence, which identifies the most promising avenues for applying AI in development and climate policy and evaluating applications of AI. Under his leadership, J-PAL has expanded into new sectors, launched regional and country offices, and helped scale programs reaching over 600 million people.

Beyond J-PAL, Dhaliwal serves on the boards of Noora Health and Rocket Learning and advises Unilever’s Sustainability Advisory Council. A former Indian Administrative Service officer, he has also worked in economic consulting and public governance. He holds degrees in economics from the University of Delhi and the Delhi School of Economics, and an MPA from Princeton University.

Erica Finkle, Director of AI Policy at Meta

Erica Finkle is Director of AI Policy at Meta. Since joining the company, then called Facebook, in 2017, she has worked to develop approaches within the company and in public policy to promote the responsible development of products and technologies such as machine learning and artificial intelligence. Finkle and her team have partnered closely with tech policy experts inside and outside the company, along with product, engineering, research, and other teams, on rapidly developing policy and technical conversations seeking to advance responsible practices to artificial intelligence, privacy, online trust, youth protections, healthcare technology, and social impact products.

Previously, Finkle served as a Policy Manager in the Mayor’s Office of the City and County of San Francisco. Prior to that, she was an attorney in private practice at Linklaters LLP in London. Finkle earned her JD from Columbia Law School, a Master of Public Policy from the University of Oxford, a Master of Laws in International Criminal Law from the University of Amsterdam, and a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from Cornell University.

Alex 'Sandy' Pentland, Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI (HAI), and Head of the Human Dynamics Research Group at the MIT Media Lab

Professor Alex ‘Sandy’ Pentland is a HAI Fellow at Stanford and helped create and direct the MIT Media Lab and Media Lab Asia in India. Recognized by Forbes as one of the world's most powerful data scientists, he played a key role in shaping the EU’s privacy regulations and the UN’s transparency and accountability mechanisms for the Sustainable Development Goals. A member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering, he has received numerous honors, including MIT’s Toshiba endowed chair and recognition from DARPA for the 40th anniversary of the internet.

Beyond academia, Pentland’s lab has co-founded or incubated companies, including those behind India’s Aadhaar identity system and Alibaba’s news and advertising arm. His more recent ventures focus on AI, digital identity, and financial privacy. His books, including Social Physics and Trusted Data, explore the intersection of technology, society, and governance.

About the Moderator:

Namrata Kala, Noosheen Hashemi Visiting Fellow at the King Center on Global Development

Namrata Kala is the Noosheen Hashemi Visiting Fellow at the King Center on Global Development and an Associate Professor in Applied Economics at the MIT Sloan School of Management. Kala is an economist with research interests in environmental and development economics. Her current research projects include studying how firms and households learn about and adapt to environmental change and regulation, the returns to environmental technologies, and the returns to worker training and incentives.

From fall 2015 to 2017, Namrata was a Prize Fellow in Economics, History, and Politics at Harvard University and a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She received her PhD in environmental economics from the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies at Yale. She also holds a BA (Honors) in economics from Delhi University, and an MA in international and development economics from Yale University.