Dr. Ayesha Khanna is Co-Founder and CEO of ADDO AI, an artificial intelligence (AI) advisory firm and incubator. She has been a strategic advisor on artificial intelligence, smart cities and fintech to clients such as SMRT, Singapore’s largest public transport company; Singtel, Singapore’s largest telco; SOMPO, Japan’s largest insurance firm; Habib Bank, Pakistan’s largest bank; and Smart Dubai, the government agency tasked to transform Dubai into a leading smart city. In 2017, ADDO AI was featured in Forbes magazine as one of four leading artificial intelligence companies in Asia and Ayesha was named one of South East Asia’s groundbreaking female entrepreneurs by Forbes magazine in 2018. Ayesha is also the Founder of 21C GIRLS, a charity that delivers free coding and artificial intelligence classes to girls in Singapore.
Prior to founding ADDO AI, Ayesha spent more than a decade on Wall Street developing large scale trading, risk management and data analytics systems. Ayesha was co-founder of the Hybrid Reality Institute, a research and advisory group established to analyze the social and economic impact of accelerating technologies. She directed the Future Cities Group at the London School of Economics, and has been a Faculty Advisor at Singularity University.
Ayesha has been named one of Singapore’s leading female entrepreneurs and a leading Asian fintech influencer by Fintech Asia. She also served on the Singapore Ministry of Education’s Steering Committee on future skills and applied learning for emerging industries. Ayesha has been recently profiled for her work in artificial intelligence in leading publications including Zürcher Zeitung (Switzerland), Corriere della Sera (Italy), Dagens Næringsliv (Norway), Lëtzebuerger Journal (Luxembourg), Computer Sweden (Sweden), Information Age (Nordics), Peak (Cover Story, Singapore), and KRIS (Singapore Airlines).
Ayesha is author of Straight Through Processing (2008) and co-author of Hybrid Reality: Thriving in the Emerging Human-Technology Civilization (2012). She has been published and quoted on technology, innovation and smart cities in The New York Times, BusinessWeek, TIME, Newsweek, Forbes, Harvard Business Review, Strategy+Business, and Foreign Policy. She has presented at major financial, technology and other industry conferences, provided high level government briefings, chaired symposiums such as AI Asia, and spoken at TEDx events.
Ayesha has a BA in Economics from Harvard University, an MS in Operations Research from Columbia University and a PhD in Information Systems and Innovation from the London School of Economics.
Ayesha is a Fellow at the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies and on the Board of Advisors for Humanity+. She is an advisor to the startups Octa (a chatbot for young travellers) and Arro (a delivery robot for sports).