Biography

Areas of Expertise

Data Science  •  Disruption  •  Impact  •  Digital Networks  •  GGC-Disaster Resilience  •  Security  •  Leadership  •  Future Forecasting  •  Exponential Organizations  •  Artificial Intelligence  •  Internet of Things  •  Human Potential  •  GGC-Governance

About David

Dr. David A. Bray has served in a variety of leadership roles in turbulent environments, including bioterrorism preparedness and response from 2000-2005, time on the ground in Afghanistan in 2009, serving as the non-partisan Executive Director for a bipartisan National Commission on R&D, and providing leadership as a non-partisan federal agency Senior Executive. He was named one of the top “24 Americans Who Are Changing the World” under 40 by Business Insider. He was also named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum for 2016-2021. Since 2017, David has served as Executive Director for the People-Centered Internet coalition co-founded by Vint Cerf and focused on providing support and expertise for community-focused projects that measurably improve people’s lives using the Internet. He also is Chief Strategy Officer for the advanced geospatial company MapLarge and serves as President of the non-profit startup Hu-manity.org focused on ensuring individuals have continuous choice and consent about their personal data.

David’s passions include the Future of Work, Future of Governance, and the Future of Augmented living learning communities that maintain a human focus on collaboration, pluralism, and individual choices. He previously served as both as a Co-Chair for an IEEE Committee focused on Artificial Intelligence, automated systems, and innovative policies globally and as a Visiting Executive In-Residence at Harvard University. He was named a Marshall Memorial Fellow for 2017-2018 and traveled to Europe to discuss Trans-Atlantic issues of common concern and the global future ahead.

David enjoys creative problem solving. He began working for the U.S. government at age 15 on computer simulations at a high-energy physics facility investigating quarks and neutrinos. In later roles, he designed new telemedicine interfaces and space-based forest fire forecasting prototypes for the Department of Defense. From 1998-2000 he volunteered as a part-time crew lead with Habitat for Humanity International in the Philippines, Honduras, Romania, and Nepal while also working as a project manager with Yahoo! and a Microsoft partner firm. Dr. Bray then joined as IT Chief for the Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response Program at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, leading the program’s technology response to during 9/11, anthrax in 2001, Severe Acute Respiratory System in 2003, and other international public health emergencies. He later completed a PhD from Emory University’s Goizueta Business School and two post-doctoral associateships at MIT and Harvard in 2008.

David likes to be a digital diplomat and a “human flak jacket” for teams of change agents working in turbulent environments. He volunteered in 2009 to deploy to Afghanistan to help “think differently” on military and humanitarian issues and in 2010 became a Senior National Intelligence Service Executive advocating for increased information interoperability, cybersecurity, and protection of civil liberties. In 2012, he became the Executive Director for the bipartisan National Commission for Review of Research and Development Programs of the United States Intelligence Community, later receiving the National Intelligence Exceptional Achievement Medal. He received both the Arthur S. Flemming Award and Roger W. Jones Award for Executive Leadership in 2013. He also was chosen to be an Eisenhower Fellow to meet with leaders in Taiwan and Australia on multisector cyber strategies for the “Internet of Everything” in 2015.

David is drawn to “near impossible missions” involving humans and technology in challenging circumstances. This included serving as a non-partisan Senior Executive and CIO for the Federal Communications Commission from 2013 to 2017. This included leading a team of positive #ChangeAgents and rolling-out new technologies that achieved results in 1/2 the time at 1/6 the cost. He was selected to receive the Armed Forces Communications and Electronic Association’s Outstanding Achievement Award for Civilian Government in 2015; he also received the global CIO 100 Award twice, usually is awarded to private sector Fortune 500 companies, both in 2015 and 2017, for his transformational leadership in change-adverse settings.

David currently serves on advisory Boards and provides strategy to start-ups espousing human-centric principles regarding collaboration, technology, and decision-making in turbulent, challenging environments. He also serves on Oxford Social Data Science Advisory Board at the University of Oxford and is a Senior Fellow with the Institute for Human-Machine Cognition. He has two book chapters coming out in 2018, one focused on the future of Augmented Intelligence and Artificial Intelligence and another on the Unfinished Work of the Internet co-authored with Vint Cerf.

Liam Byrne is a writer, reformer and campaigner who has been the (Labour) MP for Birmingham Hodge Hill since 2004. A former Cabinet minister he served in the Home Office, No 10 Downing Street and Her Majesty’s Treasury. He is the author of Dragons: Ten Entrepreneurs Who Built Britain; Black Flag Down: Counter Extremism, Defeating ISIS and Winning the Battle of Ideas; and Turning to Face the East.

Liam graduated at the top of his class at Manchester University, winning the Robert Mackenzie prize for political science and the leadership of Manchester Student Union, before going onto to win a Fulbright scholarship to the Harvard Business School where he took his MBA with honours.

After founding a high growth technology start-up, he won the tightly fought Hodge Hill by-election in 2004 and was asked to undertake some of the hardest jobs in government – in the Home Office, Downing Street and HM Treasury, creating the UK Border Agency, reorganising No 10 for Gordon Brown, and drawing up Labour’s deficit reduction plan for Alistair Darling.

In Opposition, Liam has chaired Labour’s policy review, led the Shadow Work and Pensions team, and served as the Shadow Minister for Universities, Science and Skills. Today, he chairs the cross-party think tank on progressive economics, Inclusive Growth and is the Shadow Digital Minister.

Liam has written extensively about economic history, development and foreign affairs. His history of British capitalism Dragons: Ten Entrepreneurs Who Built Britain was published in 2016. He is also the author of Black Flag Down: Counter Extremism, Defeating ISIS and Winning the Battle of Ideas; and Turning to Face the East: How Britain Prospers in the Asian Century.

He is board member of the Great Britain China Centre, and governor of the Institute of Government and lives in Birmingham with Sarah, their children and a highly excitable English pointer.