Verena is a Policy Program Manager, AI, at Facebook and Open Loop, a global experimental governance program initiated by Facebook to bridge the gap between tech and regulatory innovation. Open Loop prototypes policy ideas around new and emerging technologies, such as AI, based on a trial-and-learn, design-driven and co-creative, multi-actor approach.

Long before her current role at Facebook, Verena has been championing and leading strategy and public policy design (e.g. human-centered design, design research) and innovation projects for and at numerous organizations globally, private and public. This includes the World Economic Forum and its Centre for the 4th Industrial Revolution (C4IR), San Francisco, the EU Commission and its EU Policy Lab, the International Monetary Fund and Office of the Managing Director, the G20 or the African Development Bank and World Bank as well as listed companies.

Verena’s also wrapping up her PhD at the Royal College of Art, London. For that purpose she’s been a visiting research fellow at the C4IR, San Francisco, working specifically on Agile Governance, and a visiting researcher at Stanford’s Center for Design Research (CDR), School of Mechanical Engineering. That’s also how she came to jumpstart the Prototyping for Policy Summit in 2018, for instance. Read more about her work on her blog.