Omidyar Network President Michele Jawando will take over as CEO next month, replacing Mike Kubzansky, as the eBay founder Pierre Omidyar’s philanthropic organization looks to broaden who shapes the rules for artificial intelligence and who benefits from it. In a Wednesday announcement, the left-leaning group said Jawando, a civil rights lawyer and former Google executive, will lead its efforts aimed at expanding access to the economic opportunities of the AI era.
Jawando’s planned priorities center on widening participation in AI’s “moments, the opportunities and the rules,” she said. She said she wants a “much more diverse set of views and people and coalitions and voices shaping” the development and governance of AI, arguing that the technology’s direction is being determined too narrowly.
In separate remarks included in the announcement, Jawando said she wants people to feel “agency and power in this moment,” adding, “I hate the fact that most people feel like this technology is happening to them.” She tied that concern to the broader governance challenge posed by the concentration of decision-making power among major technology firms.
The announcement placed that concern in the context of a recent dispute involving Anthropic, the artificial intelligence company. It said the episode underscored Jawando’s view that a small number of companies should not determine guardrails for what she described as “really powerful super tools,” and the group said it has refined its focus to address what it sees as gaps in philanthropy’s engagement with AI.
Omidyar Network said it has built up a $30 million generative AI portfolio in recent years, and it described its approach as combining grantmaking with for-profit impact investments. Jawando acknowledged what she described as a “David and Goliath kind of asymmetry” in resources, saying her role would be to build bridges across philanthropy to elevate working people’s perspectives.
Outgoing CEO Mike Kubzansky said philanthropy will always face financial limits compared with large technology companies valued at “hundreds of billions of dollars,” and he said the sector is not known for strong coordination. He nonetheless highlighted Jawando’s track record in convening funders, saying she helped advance a philanthropic coalition that has put $500 million behind AI aimed at prioritizing the public’s interests.
Kubzansky said Jawando helped bring in funders that had not been as active in AI, including the Doris Duke Foundation and the Lumina Foundation. He also said Jawando “rarely jumps to the oppositional card first,” describing her as someone who “finds new partners for us” and “brings people along.”
Jawando said the organization plans to double down on consulting underrepresented communities and to work on efforts that include influencing state legislatures and supporting research that applies AI for everyday people’s benefit. The announcement cited advocacy and education efforts, including work with advocacy nonprofits such as the Model Alliance, which it said championed a New York State law requiring fashion workers’ consent to create digital replicas of their likenesses.
The announcement also described support for AI literacy initiatives led by groups such as the #BlackTechFutures Research Institute, including co-founder Fallon Wilson, who it said is working with HBCUs and African American churches. It said the organization will continue supporting tech regulation advocates despite a Trump executive order curtailing state AI guardrails, describing that policy backdrop as part of the pressure on governments’ ability to regulate.
Jawando also said the network wants to help identify models for responsible data centers that consider carbon neutrality and community engagement, as public outcry grows against energy-hungry facilities expanding in size and number. She said the group funds AI researchers aiming to advance areas such as health care rather than focusing only on business-to-business services, and she suggested the structure of tech companies’ incentives can narrow ambitions.
“I think we have the people. I think we have the will. I think we have the creativity,” Jawando said. “In a way that, if you only are forced to think about shareholders every three months, you start to lower and really narrow the window of your ambition.”
Fast Forward executive director Shannon Farley, whose accelerator backs nonprofits applying technology to social problems, said the transition reflects an “inflection point” for philanthropy. She said AI is rapidly accelerating while those most affected have the fewest protections, and she added, “We’re asking nonprofits to solve 21st-century problems with 20th-century tech,” noting that they cannot do so “if funders aren’t understanding AI and backing people with lived experience to solve the problems in front of them.”
In a final message to supporters, the announcement said Jawando sees Omidyar Network’s governance and funding role as part of building an environment where safe and responsible use of AI is not “just one company’s mantra,” and she said the problem is the absence of a “public governance framework.”