About Rachel M. Gillum, Ph.D.

Dr. Rachel Gillum is a leader with experience driving strategic initiatives within multinational corporations, the U.S. government and academia, helping organizations understand, navigate and mitigate geopolitical and ethical risks that can negatively impact  society as well as consumer brands. 
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Rachel is currently Head of Global Policy in Salesforce’s Office of Ethical & Humane Use of Technology where she and her team work to ensure Salesforce technologies, including AI, are not used for harm and uphold basic human rights. Reporting directly to the Chief Ethical & Humane Use Officer, Rachel developed the Salesforce’s Ethical Use policy practice, defining and executing on the strategic vision while building out her global team. During her tenure, Rachel has established the company’s key policy guardrails to prevent Salesforce technologies from contributing to adverse human rights impacts, and has scaled policy operations across Salesforce’s suite of  acquisitions and product offerings globally.

Rachel manages Salesforce's Ethical Use Advisory Council— a group that includes international experts from organizations such as the United Nations, Freedom House, academic institutions and more. Rachel is also an original member of the the Salesforce Racial Equality & Justice Taskforce Policy Committee where she and her colleagues develop principled stances for Salesforce’s government affairs team in support of racial justice and equality legislative efforts in the United States.
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Having worked alongside former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, former National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley and former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates at the strategic consulting firm RiceHadleyGates LLC, Rachel has experience assisting CEOs and senior executives from Fortune 50 companies to early stage startups in meeting key strategic challenges. Rachel led the firm's portfolio of technology and venture capital companies as Senior Director of the Silicon Valley Office. Her deep global experience stems from her time working as an intelligence analyst in the U.S. government as well as her experience teaching and conducting research in International Relations at Stanford University.
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While working in the responsible tech and national security spaces, Rachel has remained engaged with the academic and international policy communities. She is an affiliated scholar at Stanford University and the author of several academic works including her book, Muslims in a Post-9/11 America: A Survey of Attitudes and Beliefs and Their Implications for U.S. National Security Policy, which explores how government counterterrorism and surveillance policies can become counterproductive to national security. Rachel is also a Term Member at the Council on Foreign Relations and a nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab. 
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Rachel is passionate about paving the way for the next generation of diverse leaders. She is the co-founder and former co-director of Truman National Security Project’s diversity initiative, aimed at supporting and advancing underrepresented minorities in the international security profession. She is also an Advisory Committee Member for the Ralph Bunche Summer Institute, a program at Duke University aimed to increase diversity within the Political Science discipline by providing a pipeline to graduate school and the professorate for under-represented minority students. 
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Rachel received her doctorate and master’s degrees from Stanford University and her bachelors at the University of Washington in Seattle.