Carlos Centeno Lairet
Governance & Tech manager + researcher // Ethics & Tech Fellow @Stanford University // Pulitzer grantee // Somos Civic Lab Co-Founder // MIT Governance Innovation initiative Co-Founder // UN WFP 🇺🇳
- Role
- Co-founder at Somos Civic Lab
- Location
- Cambridge, MA, US
- LinkedIn followers
- 500 followers
About Carlos Centeno Lairet
Carlos is a 2026 Ethics & Tech Practitioner Fellow at the McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society and a grantee of the Pulitzer Center\'s AI Accountability Lab. He co-founded SOMOS Civic Lab. At the lab, the team is researching and designing tools to democratize generative AI in Global Majority countries. Somos is part of the UNDP AI Trust & Safety Programme, and it\'s supported by the Pulitzer Center\'s AI Accountability program. As MIT Emerging Talent Program Director, he equips learners from migrant and refugee communities with computer science skills. He co-founded and directed MIT\'s Governance Innovation Initiative, as Associate Director of Innovation; co-designed and launched MIT\'s first Governance Innovation Research Fellowship, and hosted MIT\'s \"Power to the Who\" governance innovation podcast. He was previously at the UN for 10 years, where he worked in community and government preparedness to natural disasters based in Latin America, Asia and Africa. His AI (NLP) prototype ALIA was a Google launchpad finalist in Munich (2018). He has supported investigative journalism projects at Pro Publica on disappearances and detentions by the US federal government.
Experience
Co-founder
Mar 2025 — Present · Cambridge, MA, US
Our mission is to democratically engage communities, civil society, and governments in Latin America & beyond to shape ethical deployment of technology impacting citizens’ lives.We are building a global model for democratized AI governance by equipping civil society, public institutions and local communities with the tools they need to test, deliberate, and shape the ethical deployment of AI across key sectors.Member of the Pultizer Center AI Accountability ColabMember of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) AI Trust & Safety Re-Imagination ProgrammeFounded at Stanford University’s Ethics, Tech & Public Policy program
Education
Stanford University School of Engineering
Ethics, Technology + Public Policy for Practitioners Program
William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communications
Bachelor of Science (BS) in Journalism & Mass Communications, Communications
Stanford University School of Engineering
Product Management
The University of Kansas
MA, International Relations (Coups and state instability/ Development Economics)
Stanford University School of Engineering
Creativity and Design Thinking Program
Skills
- Policy Analysis
- International Development
- Community Outreach
- Community Development
- Qualitative Research
- Politics
- Food Security
- Blockchain
- Proposal Writing
- Policy
- International Relations
- Humanitarian Assistance
- Program Management
- Research
- Public Policy
- Ngos
- Non-Governmental Organizations (Ngos)
- Innovation Management
- Project Management
- Program Evaluation
- Capacity Building
- Government
- Nonprofits
- Human Rights
- Humanitarian
- Distributed Ledger Technologies for Business
- Analysis
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