Rana el Kaliouby, Ph.D.

About

On a mission to humanize technology before it dehumanizes us. I invest in pre-seed and seed-stage startups building human-centric AI across Health & Wellness, the Future of Work, and Sustainable Living. I look for AI that unlocks human potential, enables entirely new use cases in massive markets, and is defensible with strong moats. As an exited AI founder, I partner closely with founders—bringing deep AI expertise and a hands-on platform to help companies move faster, build smarter, and scale with intention. I am also the Host of Pioneers of AI, a weekly show where I sit down with leading founders, thinkers, and business leaders to explore how AI is reshaping business, creativity, science, and society—and what it means to stay human along the way. My journey into AI has been anything but linear (I share it in my book Girl Decoded, Penguin Random House). I grew up in Egypt and the Middle East, earned my PhD in machine learning and computer vision at Cambridge, and completed my postdoc at MIT. In 2009, I co-founded Affectiva out of the MIT Media Lab, pioneering the category of Emotion AI. Affectiva was acquired by Smart Eye in 2021. I am deeply committed to ethical, inclusive, and responsible AI, and to expanding who gets to build—and benefit from—these technologies. I serve as a Trustee of the Museum of Science (Boston) and Milton Academy, am a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader and Eisenhower Fellow, and am active in YPO, where I helped launch and chair YPO Boston and co-chaired YPO’s first AI Summit. I also co-chair the Fortune Brainstorm AI conferences, am a TED speaker, and co-hosted a PBS NOVA series on AI. Above all, I believe in the power of human connection. I am a Chief Possibility Officer. Holler if you want to co-create some possibilities together. ✨