Paola SantanaFounder

United States - San Francisco, California

Paola Santana is a lawyer, public procurement expert and tech entrepreneur, creating the next breakthrough in government systems. She's the founder and CEO of Social Glass, a software ecosystem using Artificial Intelligence to power high-performing governments.

Previously, she co-founded Matternet, a Silicon Valley company pioneering drone logistics networks. Under her leadership, Matternet engaged with The White House, US Congress, FAA, and NASA to enact the first drone regulation in the United States in 2016, and became the world’s first drone delivery platform authorized for permanent operations over a populated city in 2017.

She co-established the Dominican Republic’s Constitutional Court, and worked at the National Elections Court coordinating the Elections Litigation Chamber. She has also collaborated with the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, and the OECD, developing striking public infrastructure projects and strategic partnerships integrating exponential technologies.

She’s best known for her ability to create things from scratch at the intersection of the public, private and regulatory domains, and for her track record introducing cutting-edge technologies into highly-regulated markets. Her most recent experience includes co-drafting the public-private partnership enabling the first multi-state Hyperloop system in the United States.

A Fulbright scholar and graduate from George Washington, Georgetown and Singularity University, she’s been featured as CNET Top 20 Latin in Tech, Forbes Top 50 Women of Power in Central America and the Dominican Republic, LinkedIn Top 10 Professionals Under 35 in Enterprise Tech, and served as Lead of the UN International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) Unmanned Aircraft Systems Advisory Group and appointed member of the first FAA Drone Advisory Committee. She’s currently Faculty at Singularity University, and Mentor for the Social Entrepreneurship Labs Incubator at Stanford University and Google AI.