Lena Slachmuijlder works at the intersection of technology, peace, and conflict. She spent a decade with independent media in Africa before leading two decades of peacebuilding initiatives across Africa, Asia, and the Middle East with Search for Common Ground, where she headed the organization’s global program portfolio and championed the field of digital peacebuilding. Since 2023, she co-chairs the Council on Tech and Social Cohesion, a global network of technologists, peacebuilders, researchers, and policy influencers dedicated to steering technology toward social cohesion rather than polarization and violence. She supports the piloting of AI-enabled deliberative technologies to support collective decision-making, particularly in the Youth, Peace and Security space. A Senior Practitioner Fellow at the University of Southern California’s Neely Center for Ethical Leadership and Decision Making, she is a graduate of Stanford University and Amsterdam’s THNK School of Creative Leadership, and is based in Brussels.