Payal Arora

Payal Arora is a Professor of Inclusive AI Cultures at Utrecht University, and Co-Founder of FemLab, a feminist futures of work initiative. She is a digital anthropologist and author of award-winning books including ‘The Next Billion Users’ with Harvard Press. Her upcoming book with MIT Press & Harper Collins India, ‘From Pessimism to Promise: Lessons from the Global South on Designing Inclusive Tech” comes out in the summer 2024. Forbes named her the “next billion champion” and “the right kind of person to reform tech.”

She has been covered in the media including by the BBC, Financial Times, The Economist, Quartz, 99% Invisible, Tech Crunch, The Boston Globe etc. She has consulted on inclusive innovation, feminist design, and AI ethics for diverse organisations such as IDEO, Adobe, Spotify, Google, UNESCO, KPMG, GE, UNHCR, and HP etc. She has given more than 350 talks in 115 cities in 67 countries alongside figures like Jimmy Wales and Steve Wozniak and TEDx talks on the future of the internet and innovation. She has held Fellow positions at GE, ZEMKI, ITSRio, MICA, and NYU and is a Rockefeller Bellagio Resident Alumnus. She is Indian, American, and Irish, and is currently based in Amsterdam.