Advisory Group

Co-Chair, DEL Advisory Group
Before taking on the role of CFO at OpenAI, Sarah Friar was chief executive officer of Nextdoor, the neighborhood network that connects neighborhood stakeholders, including neighbors, businesses, and public services, online and in real life to build stronger, more vibrant, and resilient neighborhoods. She helped take the company public in 2021 under the ticker NYSE:KIND.

Co-Chair, DEL Advisory Group
As Senior Vice President for Research, Technology, and Society, James Manyika leads efforts to responsibly shape and advance Google and Alphabet’s most ambitious innovations to benefit people and impact society for the better. He oversees Google Research, which pursues challenges and breakthroughs in computer science — including in AI, machine learning, algorithms, quantum computing, and responsible AI.

Dario Amodei is chief executive officer and co-founder of Anthropic, an artificial intelligence (AI) safety and research company working to build reliable, interpretable and steerable AI systems.

Erik Brynjolfsson is one of the world’s leading experts on the economics of technology and artificial intelligence. He is the Jerry Yang and Akiko Yamazaki Professor and Senior Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI (HAI), and Director of the Stanford Digital Economy Lab. He also is the Ralph Landau Senior Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR), Professor by Courtesy at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and Stanford Department of Economics, and a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER).

One of the most-cited authors on the economics of information, Brynjolfsson was among the first researchers to measure productivity contributions of IT and the complementary role of organizational capital and other intangibles.

Diane Coyle is the Bennett Professor of Public Policy at the University of Cambridge. She is the Research Director at the Bennett School of Public Policy. Diane’s latest book is The Measure of Progress: Counting what really matters.

Her own research focuses on productivity, the digital economy and AI policy, and economic measurement. She has been writing about the effects of digital technologies since her first book, The Weightless World,  in 1997. The underlying motivation for all her work is the question: what does it mean for the economy to improve, and who benefits?

Steven A. Denning is the Chairman Emeritus of General Atlantic LLC, a firm he joined in 1980 and has helped build into a leading global growth equity firm with $40 billion in assets under management and fourteen offices worldwide.

John Etchemendy is Provost, Emeritus, the Patrick Suppes Family Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences, and the Denning Family Co-Director of HAI.

In his 35 years as a Stanford faculty member, Etchemendy has also served as director of the Center for the Study of Language and Information, chair of the Philosophy Department, and senior associate dean for the School of Humanities and Sciences. He earned his undergraduate and master’s degrees in philosophy from University of Nevada, Reno, and his PhD from Stanford.

Reid Hoffman is the co-founder of LinkedIn, co-founder of Inflection AI, and a partner at Greylock. He currently serves on the boards of companies such as Aurora, Coda, Entrepreneur First, Microsoft, and Nauto. He also serves on nonprofit boards, such as Kiva, Endeavor, CZI Biohub, Opportunity@Work, and the MacArthur Foundation’s Lever for Change.

Bengt Robert Holmström is a Finnish economist who is currently Paul A. Samuelson Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Together with Oliver Hart, he received the Central Bank of Sweden Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2016.

James Landay is a Professor of Computer Science and the Anand Rajaraman and Venky Harinarayan Professor in the School of Engineering at Stanford University. He specializes in human-computer interaction. Landay is the co-founder and Co-Director of the Stanford Institute for Human-centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI).

Jonathan Levin is President of Stanford University and Bing Presidential Professor and Professor of Economics and Senior Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research.

He was formerly the Philip H. Knight Dean and Professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. He has been a member of the Stanford faculty for sixteen years. He is also a professor of economics at the School of Humanities and Sciences and a Senior Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research. Prior to his current appointment, he served as Chair of the Stanford Economics Department, and Director of the Industrial Organization Program at the National Bureau for Economic Research.

Fei-Fei Li is the inaugural Sequoia Professor in the Computer Science Department at Stanford University, and Co-Director of Stanford HAI. She served as the Director of Stanford’s AI Lab from 2013 to 2018. And during her sabbatical from Stanford from January 2017 to September 2018, she was Vice President at Google and served as Chief Scientist of AI/ML at Google Cloud. Li obtained her B.A. degree in physics from Princeton in 1999 with High Honors, and her PhD degree in electrical engineering from California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in 2005. She joined Stanford in 2009 as an assistant professor. Prior to that, she was on faculty at Princeton University (2007-2009) and University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (2005-2006).

Ann Mather has almost 18 years experience serving on the boards of some of the most transformative technology companies in the world. Most notably, she has been on the boards of Alphabet (Google) since 2005, Netflix since 2010 and Airbnb since 2018. She has significant additional board experience helping to shepherd earlier stage companies to successful outcomes, including the sale of Shopping.com to Ebay in 2005, the sale of Zappos to Amazon in 2009, the sale of Ariat to the Fisher family in 2012, the sale of Shutterfly to Apollo in 2019, the sale of Glu to EA in 2021, and several years chairing the board of MGM prior to the announced acquisition by Amazon in 2021. IPOs launched during her board tenure include Shopping.com, Glu, Arista Networks, Airbnb, Bumble and Blend, and Planet announced a $2.8B SPAC deal in July 2021. Ann has also been an independent trustee to the Dodge & Cox Mutual Funds since 2011.

Mira Murati launched an AI startup called Thinking Machines Lab in February 2025. She previously was the chief technology officer of OpenAI, and senior product manager at Tesla, Inc. (Model X program).

Condoleezza Rice is the Tad and Dianne Taube Director of the Hoover Institution and the Thomas and Barbara Stephenson Senior Fellow on Public Policy. In addition, she is a founding partner of Rice, Hadley, Gates & Manuel LLC, an international strategic consulting firm.

From February 1989 through March 1991, Rice served on President George H.W. Bush’s National Security Council staff. She served as director, then senior director, of Soviet and East European Affairs, as well as special assistant to the president for National Security Affairs. In 1986, while an international affairs fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations, Rice also served as special assistant to the Director of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

From January 2005 to January 2009, Rice served as the 66th Secretary of State of the United States, the second woman and first black woman to hold the post. Rice also served as President George W. Bush’s Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs (National Security Advisor) from January 2001 to January 2005, the first woman to hold the position.

Dr. Nela Richardson is ADP’s Chief Economist and ESG Officer. Nela is the head of the ADP Research Institute (ADPRI), where she leads economic research and provides reliable and timely analysis for the public, global and local businesses, and policymakers. Her background and expertise cross many industries, including finance, technology, housing and labor.

Eric Schmidt is an accomplished technologist, entrepreneur, and philanthropist. As Google’s Chief Executive Officer, he pioneered the company’s transformation from a Silicon Valley startup to a global leader in technology. He served as Chief Executive Officer and Chairman from 2001 to 2011, Executive Chairman from 2011 to 2018, and most recently as Technical Advisor. Under his leadership, Google dramatically scaled its infrastructure and diversified its product offerings while maintaining a strong culture of innovation.

Eric currently serves as Chair of the Board of Trustees for The Broad Institute and as a board member for the Mayo Clinic and the advisory board at University of California, Berkeley, among others. His philanthropic efforts through The Schmidt Family Foundation and the Schmidt Ocean Institute with his wife Wendy, focus on climate change, including the support of ocean and marine life studies at sea, as well as education and cutting-edge research and technology in natural sciences and engineering.

Additionally, he is the co-founder of Schmidt Futures with his wife Wendy, which bets early on exceptional people making the world better, applying science and technology thoughtfully, and bringing people together across fields. Most recently, the couple co-founded Schmidt Sciences, a philanthropic venture to fund unconventional areas of exploration in science and tech.

Spence is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and Philip H. Knight Professor and dean, emeritus, at Stanford Graduate School of Business. He is the chairman of an independent Commission on Growth and Development, created in 2006 and focused on growth and poverty reduction in developing countries.

In 2001, he was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his contributions to the analysis of markets with asymmetric information. He received the John Bates Clark Medal of the American Economic Association awarded to economists under 40.

He served as Philip H. Knight Professor and dean of Stanford Business School from 1990 to 1999. As dean, he oversaw the finances, organization, and educational policies of the school. He taught at Stanford GSB as an associate professor of economics from 1973 to 1975.

He has served as member of the boards of directors of General Mills, Siebel Systems, Nike, and Exult, and a number of private companies. From 1991 to 1997, he was chairman of the National Research Council Board on Science, Technology, and Economic Policy.

Jeff Wilke retired as Amazon’s CEO Worldwide Consumer in February 2021. During his more than 21 years as a corporate officer, he led Amazon’s retail and third-party stores, operations, marketing, Prime, and technology teams. Jeff joined Amazon in 1999 to lead the buildout of global operations, and his operations team created the infrastructure and technology that led directly to Amazon Prime. Jeff led teams that launched Prime Video, Prime Now, Prime Day, Amazon Fashion, and many other innovations that are now part of the Amazon customer experience. Jeff also oversaw Amazon’s acquisition and integration of Whole Foods Market. He helped create Amazon’s corporate culture, processes, and mechanisms, including Amazon’s Leadership Principles, which codified the company’s unique DNA for generations of leaders. He brought to Amazon a playbook with principles and processes from manufacturing, including Lean and Six Sigma, and corporate processes such as the HR mechanisms that shaped how Amazon evaluated and grew talent.

Jeff is chairman and co-founder of Re:Build Manufacturing, a private company that aims to integrate new technologies with conventional manufacturing businesses to accelerate their growth and improve performance. Over the coming decades, the company expects to create new U.S. factories and thousands of new U.S. manufacturing jobs.

Jerry Yang, MS ’90 and BS ’90 (Electrical Engineering) co-founded Yahoo! Inc. in 1995. He served on the board of directors and as a key member of the executive management team until 2012. While at Yahoo, he led a number of initiatives including two of the biggest investments in the internet: Yahoo Japan and Alibaba Group. Widely recognized as a visionary and pioneer in the Internet technology sector, he was named one of the top 100 innovators in the world under the age of 35 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Technology Review in 1999.

Jerry is chair of The Stanford Board of Trustees and previously served as  vice-chair. A longtime Stanford volunteer, he also serves on the advisory boards of the Knight-Hennessy Scholars, Cantor Arts Center, The Natural Capital Project, and Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI. Jerry earned both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Stanford.