Dr. Rachel Gillum is a leader with experience driving strategic initiatives within multinational corporations, the U.S. government and academia, helping organizations understand, navigate and mitigate geopolitical and ethical risks that can negatively impact society as well as consumer brands.
Rachel is currently Vice President of
Ethical & Humane Use of Technology at Salesforce where she and her team work to ensure Salesforce technologies, including AI, uphold basic human rights and are not used for harm. Reporting directly to the Chief Ethical & Humane Use Officer, Rachel established the Salesforce’s Ethical Use policy practice, defining and executing on the strategic vision while building out her global team. During her tenure, Rachel has established the company’s key policy guardrails and has scaled policy operations across Salesforce’s suite of acquisitions and product offerings globally. Her team’s work includes the development of the company’s policies and guardrails of Salesforce’s suite of generative AI tools,
EinsteinGPT.
Rachel manages Salesforce's Ethical Use Advisory Council— a group that includes international experts from organizations such as the United Nations, Freedom House, academic institutions and more — which helps guide the responsible development of Salesforce’s products and use policies.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce appointed Rachel as a Commissioner on its
Artificial Intelligence (AI) Commission on Competition, Inclusion and Innovation. The Commission, co-chaired by former Rep. John Delaney (D-MD) and Rep. Mike Ferguson (R-NJ), convenes thought leaders with experience in government, industry, and civil society to develop durable, bipartisan AI policy solutions to ensure the United States continues to lead in innovation while fostering fairness in deploying this revolutionary technology. Read the report
here.
Rachel is an affiliated scholar at Stanford University and the author of several academic works including her book,
Muslims in a Post-9/11 America: A Survey of Attitudes and Beliefs and Their Implications for U.S. National Security Policy, which explores how government counterterrorism and surveillance policies can alienate the country’s most integrated Muslims and become counterproductive to national security. She is a nonresident fellow at the
Atlantic Council and a Term Member at the
Council on Foreign Relations. She received her doctorate and master’s degrees from Stanford University and her bachelors at the University of Washington in Seattle.
Having worked alongside former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, former National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley and former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates at the strategic consulting firm
RiceHadleyGatesManuel LLC, Rachel has experience assisting CEOs and senior executives from Fortune 50 companies to early stage startups in meeting key strategic challenges. Rachel led the firm's portfolio of technology and venture capital companies as Senior Director of the Silicon Valley Office. Her deep global experience stems from her time working as an intelligence analyst within the U.S. government as well as her experience teaching and leading major research projects in International Relations at Stanford University.
Rachel is passionate about paving the way for the next generation of diverse leaders. Rachel serves as a mentor for
Techstars Oakland, an accelerator program backed by J.P. Morgan Chase. The program is designed to build genuine connections between diverse founders with local mentors and provide equitable access for entrepreneurs of all backgrounds.
She is the co-founder and former co-director of Truman National Security Project’s diversity initiative, aimed at supporting and advancing underrepresented minorities in the international security profession. She is also an Advisory Committee Member for the
Ralph Bunche Summer Institute, a program at Duke University aimed to increase diversity within the Political Science discipline by providing a pipeline to graduate school and the professorate for under-represented minority students.
Rachel M. Gillum, Ph. D.