Dr. Charna Parkey is an experienced startup tech executive, product builder, speaker, writer, and mentor; leveraging 20+ years of experience to successfully bring B2B AI products to market. Charna is passionate about using AI in transparent, accountable, and trusted ways to combat systemic oppression.

Currently, she is the VP of Product & Ops, Innovation at DataStax, member of the WEF AI Governance Alliance’s Sustainable Applications and Transformation working group championing responsible global design and release of transparent and inclusive AI systems and the host of the podcast Open Source Data uncovering what we can learn from ai-native development through stimulating conversations with developers, regulators, academics and people like you that drive forward development, seek to understand impact, and are working to mitigate risk in this new world.

Previously, she was the VP of Product at Kaskada where she co-created the first commercially available feature engine with time travel. Prior to that, she was employee #6 at successful augmented writing startup Textio where she engineered an early version of the company’s flagship technology before becoming the VP of Customer Success scaling the business from pre-revenue to 14.5M in ARR. She has worked with customers spanning a broad range of industries, including a quarter of all Fortune 100 companies to implement AI at scale. Charna earned her Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering at the University of Central Florida.