Overview

Gender

female

Investor Type

Angel

Investor Stage

Seed

Joanna Shields (Baroness Shields OBE) is a tech industry veteran with a successful track record building some of the world’s best-known companies. Her career spans over 30 years and has focussed on harnessing the power of technology to drive change that improves connectivity, humanity and society. Joanna is currently Chief Executive Officer of BenevolentAI, a world leader in the development and application of artificial intelligence and machine learning to understand the underlying causes of disease, accelerate drug discovery and develop new and more effective medicines.
Prior to joining BenevolentAI, Joanna served as the UK’s first Minister for Internet Safety and Security, Under Secretary of State, Special Advisor on the Digital Economy, and Chair & CEO of TechCityUK.
Prior to her government service, Joanna held executive roles at Google, Facebook, Bebo/Aol, Decru, RealNetworks, Veon and EFI and served as a non-executive director of the London Stock Exchange Group.
Joanna founded WePROTECT.org, a multi-stakeholder global alliance working to protect children from online abuse and exploitation. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Transatlantic Commission on Election Integrity and the Child Dignity Alliance. She is also a Commissioner on the Oxford Commission on AI & Good Governance (OxCAIGG) and sits on the Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence (GPAI) as the UK nominated expert on an AI-enabled COVID response. In November 2020, she was elected Co-Chair of the GPAI Steering Committee and Chair of the GPAI Multi-stakeholder Expert Group Plenary.
In 2014, Joanna was appointed OBE for services to digital industries and voluntary service to young people and made a Life Peer of the House of Lords.