We're building an ecosystem.
Plurality Institute is a 501c3 nonprofit dedicated to fostering human cooperation and progress. We serve as a hub for academics, industry researchers, practitioners, and leaders from both civil and governmental sectors, all of whom are pushing boundaries to reimagine collaborative frameworks.
Our mission is to support and nurture the emerging field of plurality. We facilitate this through hosting both in-person and online events, supporting partner initiatives, sharing pivotal news and research updates, and offering a centralized job and opportunity portal to enhance ecosystem accessibility.
We aim to unify the expertise of stakeholders from a variety of backgrounds—from AI-enhanced democracy, Web3's altruistic potential, to peacekeeping research and cultural bridge-building initiatives.
We strive to operate in alignment with the values of the ecosystem we support, uplifting a variety of approaches and perspectives and fostering connections across the community we serve.
The Steering Committee
Our steering committee provides us with extensive experience and insight across the ecosystem, and helps to shape the overall vision for our work.
Audrey Tang
Audrey Tang Feng is a Taiwanese free software programmer and the inaugural Minister of Digital Affairs of the Republic of China. They are also known for revitalizing the computer languages Perl and Haskell, as well as building the online spreadsheet system EtherCalc in collaboration with Dan Bricklin.
Minister of Digital Affairs
Taiwan
Danielle Allen
Danielle Allen is a James Bryant Conant University Professor at Harvard University and Director of the Allen Lab for Democracy Renovation at Harvard Kennedy School's Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation. She is a professor of political philosophy, ethics, and public policy. She is also a seasoned nonprofit leader, democracy advocate, tech ethicist, distinguished author, and mom.
Political Science
Harvard University
Glen Weyl
Glen Weyl is a co-founder and the Chair of Plurality Institute, the Research Lead of Microsoft Research's Plural Technology Collaboratory, Founder of RadicalxChange Foundation, and co-author of Radical Markets and Plurality: The Future of Collaborative Technology and Democracy. He was Valedictorian of Princeton University in 2007, received his PhD in economics from the same in 2008, was a Junior Fellow of the Harvard Society of Fellows, an Alfred P. Sloan Fellow and has taught economics at University of Chicago, Princeton, Harvard and Yale.
Economics
Microsoft Research
Lisa Schirch
Lisa Schirch has 30 years of experience in peacebuilding research, policy advocacy, practice, and teaching. A political scientist by training, she earned her Ph.D. in 1989 from George Mason University. She is a University of Notre Dame Professor of Peacebuilding and Technology, Director of the Peacetech and Polarization Lab, Co-Chair of the Council on Technology and Social Cohesion, and Research Fellow of the Toda Peace Institute.
Peace Studies
Notre Dame
Michael Jordan
Michael I. Jordan is the Pehong Chen Distinguished Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and the Department of Statistics at the University of California, Berkeley. His research interests bridge the computational, statistical, cognitive, biological and social sciences.
Computer Science
UC Berkeley
Our Team
We support the latest work in collective intelligence, deliberative democracy, tech for social inclusion and more.
Amina Vinson
Amina is a Research Assistant at Plurality Institute. She's also a Human-Computer Interaction Master's Candidate at UC Santa Cruz and Head of User Engagement at Harvard i-Lab's MintStars. She previously served as a Board Member of TAMPEP EU, the European Network for the Promotion of Rights and Health among Migrant Sex Workers. Her interests include social computing, documentaries, science fiction, the creator economy and Japanese pop culture.
Research Assistant
David Bloomin
David is the Special Projects lead at Plurality Institute. With over 20 years in software engineering, he has helped shape large-scale infrastructure and AI projects at early-stage Google, Facebook, and Asana. Now he delves into multi-agent reinforcement learning and collective intelligence-inspired AI. He co-founded Plurality Institute to advance collective intelligence research. His work blends practical engineering with a quest to explore AI's broader potential.
Co-Founder & Special Projects
Eugene Leventhal
Eugene is a Research Lead at Plurality Institute. He is also the Interim Executive Director at Metagov, a governance research nonprofit, where he leads the Grants Innovation Lab. Previously, Eugene was the Executive Director of the Smart Contract Research Forum and worked as a Graduate Assistant and Project Manager at Carnegie Mellon's CyLab. His interests center around governance, grant funding and evaluation, and research systems.
Research Lead
Firen Forrest
Firen is the chief of staff at Plurality Institute. She is also the President of Ignite Talks, a global public speaking community. Previously she was a Project Manager at Sentz, an open-source blockchain-based cash app inside of Signal. She was the Founder and CEO of Nightingale Birth Center, a women’s health clinic. She holds an MBA in Global Business with a specialization in Entrepreneurship.
Chief of Staff
Jeffrey Fossett
Jeff is a Research Lead at Plurality Institute and a PhD student at Harvard Business School, where he conducts research in the economics of digitization and technology governance. He has academic and professional background in statistics, science & technology studies (STS), and technology policy. Previously, he has been involved at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, and worked as a Data Scientist at Airbnb.
Research Lead
Rose Bloomin
Rose is the Executive Director of Plurality Institute. She also serves as the Board President of homeless service nonprofit Community Forward SF. Her previous work includes: Co-founder and CEO of HandUp.org which has raised $7.44M for people experiencing poverty in the US; Special Projects at intelligent robotics startup Vicarious PBC including AI ethics and workforce development research; founding CEO of GiveCrypto.org; and Data Manager for Obama's 2008 presidential campaign. Rose was listed in the Top 100 People in Tech by Business Insider.
Co-Founder & Executive Director
Our Partners
We've partnered with some of the most forward-thinking organizations of today.
Advisors
Our advisors are subject matter experts that are deeply engaged with the plurality community, and support us with specific projects and endeavors.
Yu-Ting Kuo
Executive Board Member and Adjunct Faculty, MIT Sloan School of Management
Kinney Zalesne
Former General Manager of Corporate Strategy, Microsoft
Senior Advisor, GETTING-Plurality Initiative, Harvard
Scott Moore
Co-Founder, Gitcoin
Research Advisor, Metagov
James Evens
Professor, University of Chicago
Director, Knowledge Lab at the University of Chicago
Puja Ohlhaver
GETTING-Plurality Research Network, Harvard Kennedy School
Wes Chow
Head of Engineering
MIT Center for Constructive Communication
Vivian Chen
Contributor at da0/ g0v
Shrey Jain
TPM at Microsoft Research, GETTING-Plurality Research Network, Harvard Kennedy School
Aviv Ovadya
Founder, AI & Democracy Foundation;
Affiliate, Berkman Klein Center—Harvard;
Colin Megill
Co-founder, Pol.is;
President, The Computational Democracy Project