Paulo Carvão

Paulo Carvão is the inaugural Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the Harvard Institute of Politics Governance Lab. He is also a Senior Fellow at the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government at the Harvard Kennedy School. He researches the complexities of AI regulation in the United States to propose a framework that supports rapid technological innovation minimizing societal impact.

Paulo is an accomplished Global Technology Executive with a proven track record of leading large businesses at IBM, where he was a senior leadership team member until 2022. During his three-decade tenure at IBM, he led organizations that assisted clients with information technology infrastructure and digital transformation initiatives, leveraging a portfolio of hardware, software, and services offerings. Central to these efforts were the transition to cloud infrastructure and the integration of artificial intelligence into business processes.

Since retiring from IBM, he has served as a strategic advisor for technology and go-to-market issues, as well as a venture capital investor and board advisor. He serves on the advisory boards of technology startups, including Orby.co (neurotechnology and AI for rehabilitation and pain management) and Skills.tech (a hyper-personalized generative AI enterprise education platform). During his 2023 social impact fellowship at the Harvard Advanced Leadership Initiative, Paulo focused on the intersection of technology and democracy, and entrepreneurship as a vehicle for social mobility. He was also a Fellow at the Harvard Safra Center for Ethics and an advisor to the Office of the United Nations Secretary-General’s Envoy on Technology, concentrating on Artificial Intelligence.

Passionate about mentoring current and future leaders, he currently mentors at the Harvard Innovation Labs and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology PKG Center, in addition to GovLab.