Yonah Welker
Boards now own AI decisions that used to live two layers below them. EU AI Act compliance, algorithmic bias claims and public scrutiny of how systems treat customers, employees and citizens have moved governance from a technical conversation to a board one. The gap most organisations face is between AI policy on paper and the operating substance needed to defend an algorithmic decision when it is challenged.
Yonah Welker is a public technologist and AI policy contributor who helps organisations and governments build defensible AI governance for high-stakes domains, including accessibility, neurodiversity and public services.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Yonah Welker
- Direct line into the European policy machinery shaping AI rules, through working group contributions to the EU AI Code of Practice and DG CNECT’s digital and critical infrastructure work.
- Specific expertise in the area regulators are now scrutinising hardest: how AI systems treat disability, neurodiversity, accessibility and other designated groups, with published frameworks and a MOOC catalogued by OECD.AI.
- Cross-institutional fluency across OECD, UN IGF, UNESCO and WHO governance processes, useful for organisations whose AI strategy now has to answer to several overlapping frameworks at once.
- A practitioner-policy bridge rather than a pure academic. The work moves between technology evaluation, ethics audit and policy drafting, which is the lane most boards now need filled.
Biography highlights
- AI expert listed in the OECD.AI community directory; affiliated with MIT collaborative work and contributor to OECD.AI’s Wonk blog.
- Contributor to the EU AI Code of Practice (working Groups 2 and 3) and to DG CNECT digital and critical infrastructure programmes.
- World Economic Forum agenda contributor and TechPolicy.Press author on AI governance, accessibility and algorithmic equity.
- Co-founder of Hardwaretech think tank (2006), with evaluator and rapporteur roles on EU Commission-funded technology projects.
- Speaker at the AI Action Summit (Paris/Sorbonne), Sciences Po, Technical University of Munich, AI Safety Korea 2024 and the Delphi Economic Forum.
- Judge, Diversity in Tech Awards; contributor to UNESCO Digital Week programming and UN IGF Data and AI Governance Coalition.
Biography
AI governance has moved out of the engineering org and onto the board agenda. The EU AI Act, the OECD framework, UNESCO’s ethics recommendation and the G7 Hiroshima Process now overlap on the same operating decisions, and the speakers who can navigate all of them at once are scarce.
Welker sits inside several of those processes at once. He has contributed to working groups on the EU AI Code of Practice, to DG CNECT’s digital and critical infrastructure work, and to OECD.AI’s policy outputs, including a disability-centred AI and ethics MOOC catalogued in the OECD.AI tools repository. He is listed as a contributor at the World Economic Forum and as an author at TechPolicy.Press, with commentary appearing in OECD, UN-related and national policy channels.
His specific lane is how AI systems treat designated groups: people with disabilities, neurodivergent users, and other populations where algorithmic decisions can entrench or remove access. That is the area where regulators are now applying the most pressure, and where most organisations have the thinnest internal capability. The work draws on years of technology evaluation, including co-founding Hardwaretech think tank in 2006 and serving as an expert evaluator for EU Commission-funded innovation programmes.
For senior leaders, the value is operational. Welker can speak to what an EU AI Act audit will actually examine, what a defensible accessibility claim looks like in an AI system, and how the OECD and UN governance layers connect to the decisions a CTO or general counsel has to make next quarter.
Key speaking topics
- AI governance and the EU AI Act
- Algorithmic accountability and AI audit
- Disability-centred and accessibility AI policy
- Neurodiversity and inclusive AI design
- Sovereign AI and critical digital infrastructure
- AI safety and responsible deployment
- Public sector AI and citizen-facing systems
Ideal for
- General counsel, chief compliance officers and CTOs preparing for EU AI Act enforcement
- Heads of AI, responsible AI leads and digital ethics committees
- Public sector and intergovernmental bodies designing AI policy
- Boards reviewing AI risk exposure across accessibility, bias and public-trust dimensions
Audience outcomes
- A clearer map of how the EU AI Act, OECD framework and UN/UNESCO instruments interlock for their organisation
- Specific questions to put to vendors, internal teams and audit committees on algorithmic accountability
- A working definition of what disability-centred and accessibility AI obligations look like operationally
- Sharper instinct for where reputational and regulatory risk concentrates in current AI deployments
- A view of where European AI policy is heading next, drawn from inside the working groups shaping it
Talks
A working session on what human-centred AI means once disability, neurodiversity and accessibility move from principle to compliance obligation.
Key takeaways:
- How algorithmic decisions affect designated groups and where audit attention should focus
- Practical anchors from the OECD.AI tools catalogue and UNESCO ethics work
- What inclusive AI design looks like in product, procurement and public service contexts
A senior-level walk through the overlapping AI governance frameworks now shaping organisational decisions.
Key takeaways:
- The current state of the EU AI Act and adjacent codes of practice
- How OECD, G7 Hiroshima Process and UN IGF outputs translate into board-level questions
- What a defensible AI governance posture looks like in practice, beyond policy statements