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Paola Santana Highlight
You don’t need to lean in, you need to jump in. If you see an opportunity, you lead it. If you see a problem, you go and fix it. Commit to something.
About Paola
- Born and raised in the Dominican Republic where I grew up surrounded by poverty and inequality.
- Seeing the struggles that people like myself dealt with growing up in a poor country, I decided to take on inequity and has made that a central focus of my life.
- After receiving my bachelor's degree in law in the Dominican Republic, won a Fulbright Scholarship to pursue my master’s degree at George Washington University in Washington, D.C.
- After working as a paralegal and in the Constitutional Court in the Dominican Republic, I realized that the conversations within government weren’t solving problems in the way they should.
- Made decision to leave politics and began pursuing paths in technology that might solve the “big” problems I saw countries facing all over the world.
- Joined a Global Studies Program at Singularity University in Silicon Valley where I worked with leaders to research and develop ways to apply exponential technologies to the world’s problems.
- In 2011, I started my first company, Matternet, a drone company enabling organizations around the world better access to goods—we've partnered with Boeing, Mercedes Benz, NASA, FAA, and the ICAO.
- Founded in 2017, my second company, Social Glass, is a software ecosystem that uses AI to help governments digitize, streamline, and scale good processes and decision-making.
