Shamira Ahmed is a social scientist with over a decade of combined experience as a policy entrepreneur, experienced quantitative economist, and interdisciplinary policy and research specialist.
She is the founder and executive director of the Data Economy Policy Hub (DepHUB), the first independent think tank established by an Indigenous African woman, in South Africa. She is a PhD Candidate at the TU Delft Quantum Governance and Values Lab and was a 2023-2024 Policy Leader Fellow at the EUI’s Florence School of Transnational Governance.
Shamira has led numerous public policy-oriented research projects on the digital economy and society and contributed significantly to public interest publications such as the African Union Commission’s “Data Policy Framework”, the Global Partnership on AI’s (GPAI) Report “Towards Real Diversity and Gender Equality in Artificial Intelligence”, and Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) “Strong Sustainability by Design: Prioritizing Ecosystem and Human Flourishing with Technology-based Solutions”, to name a few.