Clare Elwell

I spent almost 5 years at Ernst & Young as a senior business transformation consultant, based out of Seattle and New York. Because of those two cities, I got to work a lot with technology clients, which made me very interested in the tech industry from the external viewpoint of a consultant. I had studied political science in undergrad and was always interested in merging what I was learning at EY with what I had learned in my political science degree. At EY, my biggest proud moment was when I had the chance to lead an international team of about 10 people - at my rank, that was quite a unique thing to get to do. I received a lot of feedback that I was able to build a really good culture on that team, so having the experience to, at a big corporation, have people look up to you, and have that team be global, and all come from different circumstances, and have that work, was something I was very proud of. I decided to leave EY in August 2025 to start a master's program at Columbia University in international affairs, concentrating in technology policy. I'm hoping to learn more about how to innovate with technology while also making sure that we've got safe guardrails around that technology. I got to see AI become this hands-on product while working with these technology companies, and then my political science mind thought, okay, I'm seeing the really exciting angle from this - what's the other angle to that on how we're making sure that these products are being created in a safe way?