James is Google-Alphabet’s Senior Vice President for Technology & Society and a member of the CEO’s leadership team. He focuses on areas ranging from AI, computing infrastructure, to the future of work, the digital economy and sustainability that have potential for broad impact on society.

He is Senior Partner emeritus of McKinsey & Company, where he also served on it board, and is Chair and director emeritus of the McKinsey Global Institute. At Mckinsey, he advised the chief executives of many of the world’s leading technology companies on technology and strategy, and he led MGI ’s research on technology and the economy, and other global economy trends.

He was appointed by President Obama to serve as Vice Chair of the Global Development Council at the White House, and by previous Commerce Secretaries to the Digital Economy Board and the National Innovation Board. He is Vice Chair of the National AI Advisory Committee which advises the President on AI. He serves on the boards of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), Hewlett, MacArthur and Markle foundations.

He is a Visiting Professor at Oxford’s School of Government and a member of the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine’s Committee on Responsible Computing. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Distinguished Fellow of Stanford’s AI Institute, a Distinguished Fellow in Ethics & AI at Oxford. A Rhodes Scholar, he has a DPhil, MSc, MA from Oxford in AI and robotics, mathematics and computer science, a BSc from the University of Zimbabwe.