Kathryn Hymes is a nonresident senior fellow at the GeoTech Center of the Atlantic Council. She is a technologist and computational linguist, currently also serving as a director of product and innovation at Doctors Without Borders. There, she leads a team of software engineers and data scientists that use modern engineering practice and human-centered design to serve the needs of aid workers for medical emergencies around the world. As a nonresident fellow, Hymes contributes expertise in humanitarian technology, applications of natural language processing, international data policy, and product development at scale.

Previously, she worked in leadership positions at multiple technology firms focused on communication, community, and the future of work, most recently as the head of international product expansion at Slack and an advisor at Airtable. She is an affiliate and past fellow at the Berkman Klein Center’s Institute for Rebooting Social Media. Her writing on language and technology has appeared in the Atlantic, Wired, and the New York Times. Hymes has extensive experience in international research and product development, including past work at Baidu in Beijing, as a Fulbright fellow in math in Budapest, and at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Meyrin, Switzerland. She has helped lead technology-focused field research in Japan, Indonesia, India, Brazil, Hungary, and the Netherlands.

Hymes holds an MS in computational and mathematical engineering from Stanford, an MA in linguistics from Stanford, and a BS in math from the University of California, Los Angeles. She will join the doctoral program in social data science at Oxford University in late 2023.