Director, UN Global Pulse
Robert Kirkpatrick is Director of UN Global Pulse, an innovation initiative of the Secretary-General, harnessing big data and artificial intelligence for sustainable development and humanitarian action. Since 2010, Robert has directed a network of Pulse Labs in Jakarta, Kampala, and New York, developing real-time and predict analytics solutions to strengthen decision making in public sector institutions and guiding policy reform to ensure responsible use of big data for the public good. Robert was the founding CTO of the Silicon Valley global health and disaster technology NGO InSTEDD, and the co-founder of Microsoft Humanitarian Systems. He has spent more than 20 years developing technology solutions for public and private sector organizations, with a focus on catalyzing organizational change.