Shireen Santosham

Lecturer, Political Economy

Shireen Santosham

Lecturer in Management

Academic Area:

Research Statement

I am interested in the impact of technology on society. My research has focused on digital equity both in the U.S. and in developing countries.

Research Interests

Technology
Digital Divide
Social Media
Cities
Sustainability
Community
Agritech

Teaching Statement

I teach the “Future of Cities” class where I bring practical experience to the classroom as the former Chief Innovation Officer of San Jose and decades of experience working with companies like Nextdoor and Plenty, an urban vertical farming company.

Bio

Shireen Santosham has over 20 years of experience working across sectors to find innovative solutions to pressing social issues.

Currently, she is the Executive Director of the Nextdoor Kind Foundation as well as Head of Social Impact at Nextdoor.

Prior to Nextdoor, she led strategy, sustainability, and community engagement initiatives for large venture-backed startups as well as served as the Chief Innovation Officer for the Mayor of San Jose, where she secured multimillion-dollar partnerships to close the digital divide for over a million San Jose neighbors. Her experience ranges from consulting at McKinsey to impact investing at Vulcan Capital to authoring ground-breaking research on the gender gap in digital access globally for the GSMA.

She testified before the U.S. Congress and spoke on numerous prominent stages including at the United Nations Conference on Women (Beijing +20). Her work has been featured in Bloomberg Technology, the New York Times, and CNN.

In her free time, she serves on the CETF Board, and enjoys the great outdoors.