Vidushi Marda

Vidushi Marda is The Collaborative’s Director of Ecosystem Building. Her experience as an internationally recognised human rights lawyer with a focus on technology policy, law, and infrastructure across multiple jurisdictions helps to forge the partnerships and coalitions needed to shape AI in the public interest. She leads the organisation’s work on building worker power across the AI supply chain. She also led the programmatic strategy for Current AI – a public-private partnership designed to scale AI in the public interest, with over $400 million in initial funding committed – ahead of its launch in 2025.

Vidushi has produced pioneering research on AI in the majority world that has become foundational in the field, brought her legal expertise into engineering spaces to strengthen human rights considerations in AI technical standards, and translated the limitations of predictive AI systems to policymakers across jurisdictions. Her thinking has informed negotiations at the Human Rights Council and the policy position of EU institutions such as the European Commission and the European Parliament. Vidushi’s work has been cited by bodies including the United Nations and the Supreme Court of India, the latter when affirming the right to privacy in India in 2017. 

She was among a handful of civil society voices at the Bletchley AI Safety Summit, has briefed diplomats ahead of UN negotiations on AI and privacy, and advised members of the European Parliament on biometrics within the EU AI Act.  Her thought leadership has been featured in The Guardian, the Financial Times, and Time Magazine, among others.