Dr. Ayesha Khanna
Ayesha Khanna, Ph.D. is Cofounder and CEO of ADDO AI, an artificial intelligence (AI) solutions firm and incubator headquartered in Singapore. She has been a strategic advisor on artificial intelligence, smart cities and fintech to leading corporations and governments.
Ayesha also serves on the Board of Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA), the Singapore government’s agency that develops its world-class technology sector to drive the country’s digital economy and power its Smart Nation vision.
In 2017, ADDO AI was featured in Forbes magazine as one of four leading artificial intelligence companies in Asia and Ayesha was named one of South East Asia’s groundbreaking female entrepreneurs by Forbes magazine in 2018. Her clients have included SMRT, Singapore’s largest public transport company; Singtel, Singapore’s largest communications technology company; SOMPO, Japan’s largest insurance firm; Habib Bank, Pakistan’s largest bank; and Smart Dubai, the government agency tasked to transform Dubai into a leading smart city. Ayesha is also the Founder of 21C GIRLS, a charity that delivers free coding and artificial intelligence classes to girls in Singapore.
Prior to founding ADDO AI, Ayesha in 2010 cofounded and was the Director of the Hybrid Reality Institute, a research and advisory group established to analyze the social and economic impact of accelerating technologies, focused on human-technology co-evolution, geotechnology and innovation.
Prior to Hybrid Reality Institute, Ayesha spent more than a decade on Wall Street developing large scale trading, risk management, and data analytics systems. She worked at Blueprint Group as Partner (2002 – 2010), where she worked on new product development, including large scale algorithmic trading, risk management and derivatives systems.
She was a Senior Advisor at Fitzgerald Analytics (2006–2009), where she advised clients on data analytics, master data management, and information-based strategy.
Between 2013 and 2016, Ayesha was Editorial Director at The Economist. There she led the global editorial team for Look Ahead, an award-winning multimedia series published by the Economist Group in partnership with GE on global innovation trends, focusing on new technologies, growth markets, and industrial sectors such as energy, transportation, manufacturing and healthcare.
Ayesha was the CEO of The Keys Academy between 2015 and 2016. She set up The Keys Global, an innovative education hub whose unique model of “externships” partnered students with leading companies to apply their skills in coding, robotics, 3D printing and other new technologies. Its interdisciplinary technology and holiday programs were featured in Singapore’s The Straits Times, French channel FranceTV and Japan’s President Family.
Ayesha has been named one of Singapore’s leading female entrepreneurs and a leading Asian fintech influencer by Fintech Asia. She also served on the Singapore Ministry of Education’s Steering Committee on future skills and applied learning for emerging industries. Ayesha has been recently profiled for her work in artificial intelligence in leading publications including Neue Zürcher Zeitung (Switzerland), Corriere della Sera (Italy), Dagens Næringsliv (Norway), Lëtzebuerger Journal (Luxembourg), Computer Sweden (Sweden), Information Age (Nordics), Peak (Cover Story, Singapore), and In The Black (Cover Story, Australia).
Ayesha is the author of Straight Through Processing (Reed Elsevier, 2007), and is series editor of The Complete Technology Guides published by Reed Elsevier, which includes the titles Next Generation Datacenters in Financial Services: Driving Extreme Efficiency and Effective Cost Savings (2009), Electronic and Algorithmic Trading Technology: The Complete Guide (2006), and Introduction to Financial Technology (2005).
She is the coauthor of Hybrid Reality: Thriving in the Emerging Human-Technology Civilization (2012) published by TED. She has been published and quoted on technology, innovation and smart cities in The New York Times, BusinessWeek, TIME, Newsweek, Forbes, Harvard Business Review, Strategy+Business, and Foreign Policy. She has presented at major financial, technology and other industry conferences, provided high level government briefings, chaired symposiums such as AI Asia, and spoken at TEDx events. She also blogs with Parag Khanna on human technology co-evolution at BigThink.
She directed the Future Cities Group at the London School of Economics, and has been a Faculty Advisor at Singularity University.
Ayesha was Founder and Director of EGO Magazine, a leading arts and culture magazine for the South Asian diaspora in New York. She is an advisor to the startups Octa (a chatbot for young travellers) and Arro (a delivery robot for sports).
Ayesha earned her Bachelor of Art degree in Economics from Harvard University and her Master of Science degree in Operations Research from Columbia University. She earned her Ph.D. in Information Systems and Innovation from the London School of Economics.
She also enjoys translating Urdu poetry.
Read The Rising Star of Alternative Beta, How Pakistan Can Fix Itself, and Be Indispensable: Skills To Beat The Depression.
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