Her Story
About Gabriela
Gabriela Torres serves as Director of AI Innovation Ecosystem Development at the Massachusetts AI Hub, a public-private initiative operating under the state's Office of Economic Development. In this capacity, she builds partnerships and drives strategy across four core pillars — startup acceleration, education and workforce development, GPU business development, and applied AI infrastructure — with the goal of linking state government to the broader startup ecosystem and accelerating responsible AI adoption throughout Massachusetts. Her approach is grounded in a human-centered philosophy toward technology, one that prioritizes human agency and thoughtful human-AI collaboration over purely automated decision-making.
Originally from Peru, Torres built an early career in corporate finance and digital transformation within the banking and investment sector before pursuing further study in the United States. She earned a master's degree from MIT through a joint program between the School of Engineering and the Sloan School of Management, where her research touched on privacy-enhancing technologies at the MIT Media Lab's Digital Currency Initiative — including co-authoring a study on strengthening privacy protections for a digital pound in partnership with the Bank of England — as well as work with MIT's Laboratory for Economic Analysis and Design examining digital financial infrastructure across the Global South. During her time at MIT, she also competed in and won multiple hackathons, including first place at the MIT Bitcoin Expo and recognition at Harvard's Venture in Metaverse competition.
Beyond her governmental role, Torres co-founded Æthos, a coworking community supporting responsible AI startups across Cambridge and Berlin, and Sundai Club, a fast-growing hacker studio that hosts weekly AI prototyping sessions and has since expanded into San Francisco and Latin America. She has also devoted years to social impact work, founding a nonprofit EdTech initiative for teenagers in Peru and leading a gender-equality program that reached 30,000 people. Driven by an enduring sense of curiosity and a belief in the value of inner reflection through practices like meditation, she continues to explore how technology, human behavior, and empowerment intersect — both in her professional initiatives and in her ongoing research into human-AI interaction.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Gabriela
01What do you attribute your success to?
I attribute my success to my curiosity. I've always wanted to understand what's coming next — it's simply part of how my mind works, almost like a scientific instinct to study trends and patterns. I also believe that everyone carries an inner wisdom, and learning to trust that has been just as important as my analytical training. Ultimately, it's my curiosity that keeps me moving forward.
02What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
I'd tell young women that many of us carry subconscious biases we aren't fully aware of, and it's important to recognize how these biases can work against us. Building self-awareness is a genuine source of power, and I believe achieving balance — including men and women together in shaping solutions — is essential to designing better systems.
03What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
The pace at which AI is evolving demands coordinated infrastructure spanning startups, education, workforce development, and compute access. Right now, I see real opportunity in centralizing workforce strategy, accelerating connections between government and startups, addressing data- and gender-related biases embedded in AI systems, and advancing research into human-AI interaction and the metrics we use to measure it.
04What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
Curiosity, human agency, balance and gender equity, self-awareness, and empowerment are the values that matter most to me — they shape both how I lead professionally and how I try to live personally.
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