Joan Ai
Director, Partnerships & Operations
Joan Ai is a mission-driven corporate social impact and digital purpose advisor and entrepreneur with over 15 years of experience at the intersection of corporate social responsibility (CSR), innovation and technology, with a focus on the social implications of technological change. Currently, her work with the World Childhood Foundation USA advances efforts to address online child sexual abuse and exploitation through cross-sector collaborations. She was a Fellow at the World Economic Forum (Seconded by DQ Institute), where she worked with corporate, government and civic leaders as well as academic experts to increase digital intelligence (“DQ”) literacy, citizenship and readiness in children and adults, especially those in marginalized and underserved communities. Her work has helped to close the digital gap between the 53% of the world’s population that is already online and the remaining 47% that is still offline.
Her start-up Prepared Child is a member of the NYU Steinhardt Edtech Incubator (powered by StartEd). In addition, Joan has extensive experience working in CSR at world-class institutions including Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and Guardian Life. Joan was a co-founder of Social Investment Advisors, a boutique consulting practice that specialized in providing turnkey CSR strategies to top-tier companies (i.e., Tom Ford) and nonprofit institutions (i.e., Stuyvesant High School).
Her career highlights include building a proprietary digital platform for improving and measuring CSR across Goldman Sachs’ offices in 45 countries (the platform is still in use today); leading the strategy for JPMorgan Chase’s 75 global volunteer leadership groups, who engaged 47,000 employees in 540,000 hours of community service; and driving global initiatives on behalf of the DQ Institute and the World Economic Forum by convening experts and leaders to address some of the thorniest issues facing society today (e.g., the consequences of mis-, dis- and mal-information and deepfakes for older adults; the global mental health crisis; creating diverse, fair and inclusive online gaming communities for children and families).
Joan is a co-chair of the Ethically Aligned Design for Parenting Committee of The IEEE Global Initiative on Ethics of Autonomous and Intelligent Systems and serves on a task force to develop an alumni community for Fellows of the World Economic Forum.
She is a member of the Board of Trustees for Stuyvesant High School Alumni Association, serves in various leadership positions for Dartmouth College and is a co-chair for the Collegiate School’s Annual Fund. She is also a Sustainer for the New York Junior League and a New York Advisory Council Member for Common Sense Media.
She graduated with high honors from Dartmouth College.