Alondra Nelson
Alondra Nelson is an American academic, policy advisor, non-profit administrator, and writer. She is the Harold F. Linder chair and professor in the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study, an independent research center in Princeton, New Jersey. Since March 2023, she has been a distinguished senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. In October 2023, she was nominated by the Biden-Harris Administration and appointed by United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres to the UN High-Level Advisory Body on Artificial Intelligence.
From 2021 to 2023, Nelson was deputy assistant to President Joe Biden and principal deputy director for science and society of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, where she performed the duties of the director from February to October 2022. She was the first African American and first woman of color to lead OSTP. Prior to her role in the Biden Administration, she served for four years as president and CEO of the Social Science Research Council, an independent, nonpartisan international nonprofit organization. Nelson was previously professor of sociology at Columbia University, where she served as the inaugural Dean of Social Science, as well as director of the Institute for Research on Women and Gender. She began her academic career on the faculty of Yale University.
She has authored or edited articles, essays, and books including The Social Life of DNA: Race, Reparations, and Reconciliation after the Genome.
Early life and education
In 1994, Nelson earned a Bachelor of Science degree in anthropology, magna cum laude, from the University of California, San Diego. While there, she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. She earned a Ph.D. in American studies from New York University in 2003. Nelson has received honorary degrees from Amherst College, Northeastern University, Rutgers University, and the City College of New York.Career
From fall 1999 to spring 2001, Nelson was the New York University Minority Dissertation Fellow in the Department of American Studies at Skidmore College.From 2003 to 2009, Nelson was assistant professor and associate professor of African American studies and sociology at Yale University, where she was the recipient of the Poorvu Award for Interdisciplinary Teaching Excellence and a Faculty Fellow in Trumbull College. At Yale, Nelson was the first African American woman to join the Department of Sociology faculty since its founding 128 years prior.
Nelson was recruited to Columbia from Yale in 2009 as an associate professor of sociology and gender studies. She was the first African American to be tenured in the Department of Sociology at this institution. At Columbia, she directed the Institute for Research on Women and Gender, founded the Columbia University Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Council, and served as the first Dean of Social Science for the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. As dean, Nelson led the first strategic planning process for the social sciences at Columbia University, successfully restructured the Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy, and helped to establish several initiatives, including the Atlantic Fellows for Racial Equity program, the Eric J. Holder Initiative for Civil and Political Rights, the June Jordan Fellowship Program, the Precision Medicine and Society Program, and the Sabancı Center for Turkish Studies. She left the Columbia University faculty in June 2019 to assume the Harold F. Linder chair and professorship at the Institute for Advanced Study, "the Princeton, New Jersey, organization that once housed the likes of Albert Einstein and J. Robert Oppenheimer."
In February 2017, the Social Science Research Council board of directors announced its selection of Nelson as the 94-year old organization's fourteenth president and CEO, succeeding Ira Katznelson. She was the first African American, first person of color, and second woman to lead the Social Science Research Council. Nelson's tenure as SSRC president ended in 2021 and was hailed as "transformative," particularly in the areas of intellectual innovation and institutional collaboration. At the SSRC, she established programs in the areas of new media and emerging technology; democracy and politics; international collaboration; anticipatory social research, and the study of inequality, including: the , "an ambitious research project that aimed to give academics access to troves of Facebook data in order to examine the platform's impact on democracy," the , , a misinformation and disinformation research platform, , the , the , the program, the , and the widely praised and influential platform.
Prior to her White House appointment, Nelson served on the boards of directors of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Center for Research Libraries, the Data and Society Research Institute, the Rockefeller Archive Center, the Russell Sage Foundation, the Teagle Foundation, and the United States International University Africa in Nairobi, Kenya. She is Director of the Brotherhood/Sister Sol, a Harlem-based youth development organization, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Innocence Project, and Mozilla.
Nelson was a member of the board for African-American Affairs at Monticello. She served on the advisory board of the Obama Presidency Oral History Project.
From 2014 to 2017, Nelson was the academic curator for the YWCA of New York City and was also a member of its program committee.
Nelson was a juror for the inaugural Aspen Words Literary Prize in 2017. She served as a juror for the Andrew Carnegie Fellows Program from 2018 to 2021, and since 2023.
Nelson has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, the National Academy of Medicine, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Academy of Political and Social Science, and the Sociological Research Association. She is a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Before joining the Biden Administration, Nelson was co-chair of the NAM Committee on Emerging Science, Technology, and Innovation, and a member of the National Academy of Engineering Committee on Responsible Computing Research. She has been a member of the World Economic Forum Network on AI, the Internet of Things, and the Future of Trust, and the Council on Big Data, Ethics, and Society. Nelson is past chair of the American Sociological Association's Science, Knowledge, and Technology section; from 2020 to 2021, she was president-elect of the international scholarly association, the Society for Social Studies of Science, relinquishing this leadership role when she assumed the role of OSTP deputy director for science and society.
Nelson has been a visiting scholar or fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, the BIOS Centre for the Study of Bioscience, Biomedicine, Biotechnology and Society at the London School of Economics, the Bavarian American Academy, the Bayreuth Academy, and the International Center for Advanced Studies at New York University.
Political appointment and public service
On February 17, 2022, President Joe Biden announced that Nelson, whom he'd previously appointed deputy director for science and society in the Office of Science and Technology Policy, would lead OSTP until permanent leadership could be confirmed. She was also appointed as deputy assistant to the president at this time. She was the first Black person and first woman of color to lead OSTP in the office's 46-year history. In this interim role, Nelson led "OSTP's six policy divisions in their work to advance critical administration priorities, including groundbreaking clean energy investments; a people's Bill of Rights for automated technologies; a national strategy for STEM equity; appointment of the nation's Chief Technology Officer; data-driven guidance for implementing the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law; a transformative, life-saving Community Connected Health initiative; and programs to ensure the U.S. remains a magnet for the world's top innovators and scientists." Nelson served as acting director until October 3, 2022, when she swore in Arati Prabhakar as the U.S. Senate-confirmed director of OSTP.Her January 2021 appointment as OSTP deputy director for science and society was praised as an "inspired choice" of "a distinguished scholar and thought leader," whose "scholarship on genetics, social inequality and medical discrimination is deeply insightful and hugely influential across multiple fields, most notably because of its focus on excellence, equity and fairness in scientific and medical innovation." Others anticipated Nelson would "open... many doors... to a more inclusive government;" Protocol said she was "the embodiment" of candidate Biden's commitment "to bring a civil rights lens to all of his administration's policies, including tech policy." Science magazine reported that Nelson's appointment reflected President Biden's concern with how the "benefits of science and technology remain unevenly distributed across racial, gender, economic, and geographic lines."
As OSTP principal deputy director for science and society, Nelson oversaw the work of the scientific integrity task force, an interagency body mandated in President Biden's "Memorandum on Restoring Trust in Government Through Scientific Integrity and Evidence-Based Policymaking" to review scientific integrity policies and practices in the federal government, including cases of improper political interference in scientific research, and the distortion of scientific and technological data and findings. Her portfolio also include open science policy, policy to strengthen and broaden participation in the STEM fields, and new and emerging technology policy. She co-chaired the Equitable Data Working Group, a body that was established by President Biden by Executive Order 13985, Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government, and co-authored its report. On October 8, 2021, Nelson co-authored an with OSTP Director Eric Lander announcing a policy planning process for the creation of an "AI Bill of Rights." On October 4, 2022, OSTP released the "Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights."
As OSTP acting director for eight months, Nelson "push policymaking motivated by... the notion that emerging technologies should be built with the fundamental rights held by citizens in a democratic society as their blueprint," including digital assets, climate and energy science and technology innovation, artificial intelligence, privacy-enhancing technologies, and public health measures such as indoor air quality for COVID-19 mitigation. Nelson advanced President Biden's Cancer Moonshot and administered the Cancer Cabinet. She encouraged greater transparency and engagement with the public in science and technology policy, championing public access to federal research, community-engaged science, and frequent external-facing communication about OSTP's work. Nelson represented United States in science and technology policy on the world stage, including at the OECD, the World Academy of Sciences, the Geneva Science and Diplomacy Anticipator, in meetings with the Republic of Korea, the European Commission, the Council of Europe, the Netherlands, Austria, Japan, the United Kingdom and others, and as Head of Delegation at the G7 Science Ministerial in Frankfurt, Germany - this meeting's topics included protecting the freedom, integrity and security of science and research; contributions of research to combating climate change; research on COVID-19 and its impacts; and support the rebuilding of Ukraine's science and research ecosystem.
Nelson's tenure at OSTP ended in February 2023 at the conclusion of her public service leave from the Institute for Advanced Study.
In October 2023, she was nominated by the White House, and then appointed by United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, to serve on the UN High-level Advisory Body on Artificial Intelligence.
On October 15, 2024, President Biden announced his appointment of Nelson to the National Science Board of the National Science Foundation. On May 13, 2025, Nelson resigned from the National Science Board, citing concerns about political interference with the board's advisory functions, according to her resignation letter in TIME. In November 2025, she was appointed to the Transition Committee of New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, advising on technology policy.