Who I Am

Hi! I'm Faisal M. Lalani, a global community organizer with a background in research, activism, writing, technology, and policy.

I studied Computer Science at the University of Colorado Boulder but quickly found myself engaged in interdisciplinary studies and projects halfway around the world:

In Nepal, I studied at the School for International Training and led research on progressive curriculums being employed in rural settings and makerspaces; in South Africa, I helped facilitate the development of community wireless networks in townships with the ICT4D Centre at the University of Cape Town; in India, I analyzed celebrity influence on politics during the 2019 general election through social media for the Technology for Emerging Markets group at Microsoft Research.

Throughout these experiences, I collaborated with several research labs including the University of Colorado at Boulder ATLAS ICT for Development Lab developing a mobile application for low-literate patients in South Asia to communicate about childbirth, the Internet Rules Lab helping compose studies on tech ethics discourse, and the University of Michigan's School of Information assisting the analysis of clean water projects in Pakistan.

Following these adventures abroad, I joined Dimagi during the COVID-19 pandemic and partnered with state governments across the United States to strengthen contact tracing efforts, while also supporting international community health programs through supervision machine learning algorithms. During this time, I also led the national school improvement initiative for the Aga Khan Education Board, in which I created and managed a countrywide fellowship of educators and students working on community-oriented models for better schools.

I then began working as a technology consultant for the data cloud company Snowflake, in which I provided high-profile companies across the US services and solutions in AI, data science, and cloud services. Soon after I was accepted to the University of Oxford's Media Policy Institute where I collaborated with public policy directors, academics, and lawyers on dissecting landmark AI legislation, content moderation, and other tech and democracy challenges around the world.

I was then invited to work in Sri Lanka by a global policy think tank called Factum and a number of civil society organizations, journalists, activists, and politicians. This was primarily to help the country combat a draconian Online Safety Bill stifling free speech by facilitating technical conversations with Big Tech, collaborating with intergovernmental organizations like the UNDP, and organizing grassroots campaigns with local celebrities and influencers.

Shortly after, I became the Global Partnerships Manager for the Tech Global Institute where I helped set up Global South regional coalitions around tech policy. At the same time, I was a non-resident fellow for New America's Planetary Politics group, studying the concept of AI sovereignty and the geopolitics of AI governance. I was also collaborating with the University of Toronto's Third Space research lab and other practitioners on gauging the practicality of responsible AI frameworks in technical processes. Finally, during this time I was also a research fellow at the Global Center on AI Governance, working on analyzing the Global Index on Responsible AI.

Now, I am the Head of Global Partnerships at the Collective Intelligence Project where I help build democratic AI processes and the Executive Editor at We Are One Humanity, where I write about human rights with the grandson of Mahatma Gandhi, Rajmohan Gandhi.

The name Thuley is derived from the Nepali poem Description by Shrawan Mukarung.