Payal Arora

Professor of Inclusive AI Cultures, Utrecht University and Co-founder, Inclusive AI Lab

Payal Arora is a Professor of Inclusive AI Cultures at Utrecht University and co-founder of two inclusive tech initiatives: Inclusive AI Lab and FemLab. She is a leading digital anthropologist with two decades of user experiences in the Global South. Payal is the author of 100+ articles and award-winning books including “The Next Billion Users” with Harvard Press. Forbes named her the ‘next billion champion’ and the ‘right kind of person to reform tech.’ She has been listed in the 100 Brilliant Women in AI Ethics 2025 and won the 2025 Women in AI Benelux Award. Her new book with MIT Press “From Pessimism to Promise: Lessons from the Global South on Designing Inclusive Tech” has been longlisted for the 2024 Porchlight Business Book Awards and won the Axiom Awards for Best books in Emerging Trends in AI. 200+ international media outlets have covered her work including the Financial Times, Wired, and The Economist, and Tech Crunch. She has consulted for several organizations including Spotify, KPMG, Adobe, IDEO, and Google. She has given 350+ keynotes in 85 countries for events such as re:publica, COP26, and the World Economic Forum, and TEDx talks. She is a Harvard and Columbia University, and Rockefeller Bellagio Resident Fellow alumni, and lives in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.