Salma Abbasi

Salma Abbasi

Professor Salma Abbasi is the Founder, Chairperson and CEO of the eWorldwide Group. An international social enterprise, actively engaged with governments, development agencies, private sector and academia driving meaningful, inclusive digital transformation leveraging innovative technologies and ethical Artificial Intelligence (AI) for sustainable future for humanity.

She is collaborating with global stakeholders to co-create ethical standards, regulations and guardrails for prevailing technologies, data privacy, trust, cybersecurity and resilience. She has published several papers highlighting the importance to understand the unknown risks and unethical challenges from Artificial Intelligence Systems (AIS) and is actively working with international think tanks to develop a series of global standards, regulations, ethical AI frameworks, and guidelines for governance, transparency, accountability, explainability, and algorithmic biased, and policy papers, particularly improving safeguarding practices for children.

Leveraging her global experience as the former Senior Vice President and Chief Quality Officer for Lucent Technologies, with over 40 years’ experience in the fields of technology, innovation, supply chain management and people-centric design, she is an advisory board member for several international organizations advocating for operational excellence, sustainability and technology for humanity.

Professor Abbasi was commissioned by UNECA in 2019 to develop the strategic roadmap and partnership framework to establish the 1st African AI Research Centre of Excellence. Subsequently developing a series of multi-level AI courses for stakeholders. In parallel, she is a visiting lecturer at 5 universities around the world and participates in high-level dialogues internationally to raise the importance for deeper and broader understanding of the evolving risks from AI, particularly the unknown consequences from rapid adoption without having the necessary policies, frameworks, safety guardrails and regulations, and skills in place. She advocates for greater international collaboration, cooperation, and partnerships with ‘equity and trust’.