Zoë Baird is a senior fellow at American Progress. She was most recently senior counselor for technology to U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo. In this role, Baird led administration work on artificial intelligence internationally, advised on technology programs, and furthered employer-based training programs. She helped advance U.S. competitiveness and economic benefit from key technologies.
Baird serves on the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Geopolitical Advisory Committee and on the Aspen Strategy Group.
Prior to Commerce, Baird was CEO and president of the Markle Foundation for more than two decades. Under Baird’s leadership, Markle worked to deploy technology to address previously intractable problems for the economic security, health, and national security of all Americans.
Baird formed Markle’s Rework America Alliance, a nationwide partnership working to get people who have not completed college into technology jobs. She established a nonpartisan Rework America State Network of 30 governors to modernize the labor market at a scale and pace not possible through individual state actions.
Baird led Markle’s collaborative efforts to reform the nation’s approach to intelligence and law enforcement after 9/11 through development of the policy and technology architecture for information sharing. This work was enacted into law. She established Markle’s Connecting for Health initiative to advance electronic medical records, which led to major federal and private sector investment.
Baird was a member of President Joe Biden and Secretary of Commerce Raimondo’s National Artificial Intelligence Advisory Committee and chair of its Working Group on International Cooperation. She was a senior trustee at the Brookings Institution and treasurer of the New York City Ballet Board of Directors.
Prior to Markle, Baird was senior vice president and general counsel at Aetna; counselor and staff executive at GE; partner at O’Melveny & Myers; visiting scholar at Yale Law School; and served on a number of for-profit and nonprofit boards.
In government, Baird was associate counsel to President Jimmy Carter (1980–1981); co-chair of the Department of Commerce Digital Economy Board of Advisors to Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker (2016–2017); on the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (1994–2000); on the Congressional Commission on Roles and Capabilities of the U.S. Intelligence Community (1995); on the Department of Defense Science Board Summer Study on Terrorism and Weapons of Mass Destruction (1997); U.S. Representative to the G-8 Digital Opportunity Task Force (2000–2002); on the Department of Defense Technology and Privacy Advisory Committee (2003–2004); and on the National Security Cyber Awareness and Response Panel (2010–2011). Baird was President Bill Clinton’s initial nominee for attorney general of the United States (1993).