About AI2050

Eric Schmidt is an accomplished technologist, entrepreneur, and philanthropist. He served as Google’s Chief Executive Officer and Chairman from 2001-2011 where he pioneered the company’s transformation from a Silicon Valley startup to a global leader in technology. Eric oversaw the company’s technical and business strategies alongside founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page. Under his leadership, Google dramatically scaled its infrastructure and diversified its product offerings while maintaining a strong culture of innovation.

Additionally, from 2018-2020, Eric served as the Technical Advisor to Alphabet, the holding company of Google, advising its leaders on technology, business, and policy issues. He was also the Executive Chairman of Alphabet from 2015-2018 and remained as the Chairman of Google until 2015.

Prior to joining Google, Eric was Chairman and CEO of Novell, a software and services company. Previously, he spent 14 years at Sun Microsystems, Inc., starting his career as a manager and rising to become their Chief Technology Officer. He also held technical positions at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), Bell Laboratories, and Zilog.

Eric has been honored with numerous accolades and supports a variety of esteemed organizations. He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2006 and inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences as a fellow in 2007. He was on the Board of Trustees at Carnegie Mellon University from 2004 to 2006, and at Princeton University from 2007 to 2010. Additionally, since 2008, he has served as a trustee of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, and after a 12-year tenure was named an emeritus board member in 2020. Eric was also a member of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science from 2009 to 2017. He currently serves as Chair of the Board of Directors of The Broad Institute, and on the board of The Mayo Clinic, the Advisory Board at UC Berkeley, and is a member of the Cornell Tech Board of Overseers. He also serves as Executive Chairman at Steel Perlot, an innovation engine that seeks to combine and leverage the brightest minds, capital, and data to accelerate the future.

Eric became the Chairman of the Department of Defense’s Innovation Board in 2016 and held the position for four years, during which he was awarded the Department of Defense Medal for Distinguished Public Service in January of 2017 by Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter. He was also a member of NASA’s National Space Council User Advisory Group for two years which was chaired by the Vice President. He served as the Chairman of the US National Security Commission for Artificial Intelligence for three years. In 2021, he launched the Special Competitive Studies Project, a new initiative that will make recommendations to strengthen America’s long-term global competitiveness for a future where artificial intelligence (AI) and other emerging technologies reshape our national security, economy, and society, of which he is also Chairman.

Eric also contributes much of his time to various programs at MIT. He is an MIT Visiting Innovation Fellow, a member of the Advisory Board for MIT IQ, a member of the MIT Commission on the Work of the Future, a member of the MIT CEO Advisory Board, and a member of the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing Advisory Council.

An accomplished author, Eric and Jared Cohen co-wrote The New York Times bestselling book, The New Digital Age: Transforming Nations, Businesses, and Our Lives in 2013. In 2014, Eric published his second New York Times bestseller, How Google Works, which he and Jonathan Rosenberg co-authored with Alan Eagle. In 2019, Eric published his third New York Times bestseller, Trillion Dollar Coach: The Leadership Playbook of Silicon Valley’s Bill Campbell, which he co-authored with Jonathan Rosenberg and Alan Eagle. In 2021, Eric co-authored the WSJ-bestselling book The Age of AI: And Our Human Future with Dr. Henry Kissinger and Professor Daniel Huttenlocher.

Inspired to continue to give back, Eric co-founded Schmidt Futures in 2017, which bets early on exceptional people making the world better, applying science and technology thoughtfully, and bringing people together across fields. In 2019, he and his wife Wendy announced a new $1 billion philanthropic commitment to identify and support talent across disciplines and around the globe to serve others and help address the world’s most pressing issues. As part of this effort, Schmidt Futures, in partnership with the Rhodes Trust, launched the flagship initiative Rise, with the aim to increase opportunity for extraordinary young people worldwide and empower them to serve their communities.

In August 2020, Eric launched a podcast, “Reimagine with Eric Schmidt,” a series of conversations with leaders in government, business, science, and technology exploring how society can solve current challenges and build a brighter future after the global coronavirus pandemic.

Eric holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Princeton University and a master’s degree and Ph.D. in computer science from the University of California, Berkeley.

Wendy Schmidt is a philanthropist and investor who has spent the past 14 years creating innovative non-profit organizations to address challenges facing communities around the world, working for clean, renewable energy, healthy food systems, healthy oceans and the protection of human rights. The critical interconnections between human activity, the land we live on and the ocean we depend upon are the central drivers of Wendy’s philanthropic work.

Wendy is president of The Schmidt Family Foundation, which she co-founded with her husband Eric in 2006. She leads the foundation’s two grant-making and investment programs—The 11th Hour Project, which works to create a just world where all people have access to renewable energy, clean air and water and healthy food, and Schmidt Marine Technology Partners, which invests in the development of promising technologies that solve complex ocean health issues and have strong commercialization potential.

Wendy and Eric also co-founded Schmidt Ocean Institute in 2009 to advance oceanographic research through the development of innovative technologies, open sharing of information and broad communication about ocean health. The institute operates Falkor—the only year-round, seagoing philanthropic research vessel in the world—and a 4500m remotely operated underwater robotic vehicle, SuBastian. Both are made available to the international science community at no cost.

A competitive sailor, Wendy has extended her oceans-focused work to the sporting world through 11th Hour Racing, an organization she co-founded in 2010 to work with the sailing community and maritime industry to advance solutions and sustainability practices that protect and restore the health of the Ocean. Wendy also founded ReMain Nantucket and ReMain Ventures, two charitable and entrepreneurial organizations that support the economic, social and environmental vitality of downtown Nantucket.

In 2017, Wendy and Eric co-founded Schmidt Futures, a philanthropic initiative that finds exceptional people and helps them do more for others together while promoting innovative approaches to problem solving across disciplines.

In the fall of 2019, Wendy and Eric announced a $1 billion philanthropic commitment for their organizations and initiatives to identify and support talent across disciplines and around the world to serve others and work to solve the world’s most pressing problems.

James is Google-Alphabet’s Senior Vice President for Research, Technology, and Society and a member of the CEO’s leadership team. He leads efforts to responsibly shape and advance Google and Alphabet's most ambitious innovations to benefit people and impact society for the better. He oversees Google Research, which pursues challenges and breakthroughs in computer science — including in AI, machine learning, algorithms, quantum computing, and responsible AI.

He is Senior Partner emeritus of McKinsey & Company, where he also served on its board, and is Chair and Director Emeritus of the McKinsey Global Institute. At McKinsey, he advised the chief executives of many of the world’s leading technology companies on technology and strategy, and he led MGI ’s research on technology and the economy, and other global economy trends.

He was appointed by President Obama to serve as Vice Chair of the Global Development Council at the White House, and by previous Commerce Secretaries to the Digital Economy Board and the National Innovation Board. He is Vice Chair of the National AI Advisory Committee which advises the President on AI. He serves on the boards of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), Hewlett, MacArthur and Markle foundations.

He is a Visiting Professor at Oxford’s School of Government and a member of the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine’s Committee on Responsible Computing. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Distinguished Fellow of Stanford’s AI Institute, a Distinguished Fellow in Ethics & AI at Oxford. A Rhodes Scholar, he has a DPhil, MSc, MA from Oxford in AI and robotics, mathematics and computer science, a BSc from the University of Zimbabwe.

Mark Greaves is the Executive Director of AI2050. An initiative of Schmidt Sciences, AI2050 supports exceptional people working on key opportunities and hard problems that are critical to get right for society to benefit from AI.

Prior to joining Schmidt Sciences, Mark was a senior leader in AI and data analytics within the National Security Directorate at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, where he created and managed large research programs in AI on behalf of the US Government. Prior to this, Mark was Director of Knowledge Systems at Vulcan Inc., the private asset management company for Paul Allen, where he led global research teams in question- answering textbooks, large knowledge graphs, semantic web, and crowdsourcing. Prior to Vulcan, Mark was Director of DARPA’s Joint Logistics Technology Office and Program Manager in DARPA’s Information Exploitation Office. At DARPA, he directed national research programs in semantic web technology, formal ontology specification, logistics and supply chain control technologies, and the application of software agent technology to problems of distributed control of complex systems-of-systems. Mark was awarded the Office of the Secretary of Defense Medal for Exceptional Public Service for his contributions to US national security while serving at DARPA.

He holds a BA in Cognitive Science from Amherst College, and MS in Computer Science from UCLA, and a PhD in Philosophy from Stanford University.

Olivia Randall is an Associate at Schmidt Sciences where she supports the AI2050 program.

Prior to joining the team at Schmidt Sciences, Olivia worked on the Entrepreneur-in-Residence and Rise initiatives at Schmidt Futures, building entrepreneurial programs for impact-driven founders. Previously, Olivia worked at Ivory Innovations where she helped source and vet candidates for a national prize in housing affordability.

Olivia graduated from the University of Utah with an Honors Bachelors of Science in Finance and a Minor in Urban Ecology.

Maya Moretta is a Program Delivery Specialist at Schmidt Sciences. Through her work, she supports program teams and awardees as they progress through the entire award life cycle, from proposal submission to final evaluation.

Prior to joining Schmidt Sciences, Maya developed her passion for progressive and equity-focused grant making while designing and launching a progressive, equity-focused general operating support grant program at Maryland Humanities in Baltimore.

Maya holds a B.A. in History and African-American Studies from Georgetown University, where she focused on the intersections of history, education and social justice. Throughout her time at Georgetown, she was a core member of the GU272 advocacy team which launched an internationally-recognized reparative justice initiative. She also supported the development of Nikole Hannah Jones' 1619 Freedom School, a culturally-sustaining curriculum for an after-school program in Waterloo, Iowa which centered Black History.

Mike Belinsky is a Director at Schmidt Futures, where he supports current programs on strategy and execution and helps design and launch new programs.

Prior to Schmidt Futures, Mike was a principal at The Bridgespan Group, where he led teams that addressed complex strategy and execution challenges for foundations, impact investors, and nonprofits. At Bridgespan, Mike also helped build the impact investing practice.

Mike also co-founded Instiglio, a social enterprise that develops impact bonds and results-based financing programs in low- and middle-income countries. At Instiglio, Mike led the team that designed the first impact bond in India — the Educate Girls Development Impact Bond — which improved primary education outcomes and served as a model for impact bonds in India and beyond. For this work, Mike received the Echoing Green fellowship and the Forbes 30 Under 30 Social Entrepreneurship award.

Mike holds a BA in economics and government from Dartmouth College and an MPP from Harvard Kennedy School, where he was managing editor of the Harvard Kennedy Review. He was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, and lives with his wife and two children in New York City.