Dr. Rachel M. Gillum is a technology policy executive and scholar whose career spans AI governance, human rights, national security, and geopolitics. Her work focuses on how powerful technologies are governed in high-stakes settings and how those choices affect people, institutions, and public trust.

As Vice President of Ethical and Humane Use of Technology at Salesforce, Rachel built and leads the company’s global policy function for responsible AI, platform safety, and human rights across Salesforce and Slack. She established Salesforce’s ethical-use policy practice from the ground up and scaled it across the company’s products and acquisitions. Her team turns emerging technology risks, human rights principles, regulatory requirements, and public trust concerns into policies, safeguards, and decision frameworks. Its work spans AI governance, content policy, Trust & Safety operations, high-risk technology decisions, and the responsible deployment of AI products and agents.

Rachel also manages Salesforce’s Ethical Use Advisory Council, which brings together international experts from the United Nations, Freedom House, academia, civil society, and industry to advise the company on consequential technology issues.

She serves as a Commissioner on the Atlantic Council’s GeoTech Commission, engaging policymakers, industry executives, and technology leaders on AI’s implications for U.S. competitiveness and global leadership. She previously served as a Commissioner on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s bipartisan Commission on Artificial Intelligence Competitiveness, Inclusion, and Innovation. She has also advised the Institute for Security and Technology’s Trust and Safety Advisory Group and served on CareMessage’s Technical Advisory Board.

Before Salesforce, Rachel was Senior Director of the Silicon Valley office at RiceHadleyGatesManuel LLC, working alongside former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, former National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley, former Secretary of Defense and CIA Director Robert Gates, and Anja Manuel. She advised CEOs, boards, investors, and senior executives—from Fortune 50 companies to early-stage startups—on geopolitics, government engagement, regulatory risk, market strategy, and sensitive technology decisions. Earlier in her career, she served as an intelligence analyst in the U.S. government, assessing threats and policy implications in complex international environments.

Rachel is Co-Chair of the American Political Science Association’s Presidential Task Force on AI, Politics and Political Science and an affiliated scholar at Stanford University. She holds a PhD in Political Science from Stanford and is the author of Muslims in a Post-9/11 America, which examines how counterterrorism and surveillance policies can undermine public trust and the national security objectives they are designed to serve. Her research includes forthcoming work on AI and politics with Cambridge University Press and peer-reviewed publications in PNAS and Perspectives on Politics. Her work and commentary have appeared in Forbes, The Washington Post, Reuters, Essence, and other outlets.