Bio
Sabhanaz Rashid Diya is a CIGI senior fellow and the founder of Tech Global Institute, a global tech policy think tank focused on reducing equity and accountability gaps between technology companies and the global majority. She has advised governments in 20 countries, including leading closed-door briefings with the White House, the US Department of State and the Office of the United States Trade Representative, multilateral international organizations such as the World Bank and the United Nations, bilateral donors, and a variety of global startups and corporations, on policy and law questions related to global internet and platform governance, responsible artificial intelligence (AI) and human rights.
A computational social scientist by training, Sabhanaz has more than 17 years of experience at the intersection of technology policy, ethics and international development. She was most recently the head of public policy for Bangladesh at Meta, where she engaged policy makers and led on various regulatory and legislative issues, including hate speech, privacy, data protection and the data economy, online harms and algorithmic transparency. Sabhanaz also worked at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, leading policy and advocacy efforts in multidisciplinary digital identity and economy, data and AI. Her career spans the private and public sectors in the United States, Asia and Africa, including work with the United States Agency for International Development and the World Bank, on encryption policy, digital trade, AI applications in the global majority and internet governance. She is the founding board director for the US-Bangladesh Business Council at the US Chamber of Commerce.
Sabhanaz holds a master’s degree in public policy from the University of California, Berkeley. She is an Asia 21 leader at the Asia Society and a corporate leader at the Council on Foreign Relations. Her interviews and writing have appeared in the Financial Times, Wired, Thomson Reuters Foundation, BBC News, France 24, Global Voices, The Straits Times, The Daily Star, Dhaka Tribune and The Business Standard.