Zoë Baird joined the Department of Commerce as Senior Counselor to Secretary Gina Raimondo in October 2022. In this role, Baird will focus on expanding employer-based training and apprenticeship programs throughout the country. She will also help advance U.S. competitiveness in key technologies and ensure broadly shared economic benefit from new technologies, including by small and medium-sized enterprises.

Prior to this role, Baird was CEO and President of the Markle Foundation for more than 20 years. Under Baird’s leadership, Markle formed the Rework America Alliance, a nationwide partnership of civil rights groups, nonprofits, private sector employers, labor unions, educators, and others, working to get people, who have not completed college, into better-paying jobs with opportunities for career growth.

Also under Baird’s leadership, Markle established a nonpartisan Rework America State Network, comprised of 30 governors and the mayor of the District of Columbia to modernize the labor market at a scale and pace not possible through individual state actions.

Baird is currently a Member of President Biden and Secretary of Commerce Raimondo’s National Artificial Intelligence Advisory Committee and Chair of its Working Group on International Cooperation.

She is a member of the Aspen Strategy Group and is a Senior Trustee at the Brookings Institution.

Previously, Baird was Senior Vice President and General Counsel, Aetna; Counselor and Staff Executive, GE; and Partner, O’Melveny & Myers. She has served on a number of non-profit boards including the Council on Foreign Relations, Save the Children, and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund. She founded Lawyers for Children America.

Her government experience includes Associate Counsel to President Jimmy Carter (1980–1981), co-chair of the Department of Commerce Digital Economy Board of Advisors to the Secretary of Commerce appointed by Secretary Pritzker (2016–2017), membership on the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (1994–2000), the Congressional Commission on Roles and Capabilities of the U.S. Intelligence Community (1995), the Department of Defense Science Board Summer Study on Terrorism and Weapons of Mass Destruction (1997), the International Competition Policy Advisory Committee to the Attorney General (2000), U.S. Representative to the G-8 Digital Opportunity Task Force (2000-2002), the Department of Defense Technology and Privacy Advisory Committee (2003-2004), and the National Security Cyber Awareness and Response Panel (2010–2011).

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