Paul Fehlinger advances responsible innovation at the intersection of policy, new technologies, venture capital, and entrepreneurship.
At Harvard's Berkman Klein Center, he specializes in how to bridge the VC and policy worlds, what makes innovation ecosystems highly performant, and how venture capital and entrepreneurial solutions can enable the responsible and regulated uses of new technologies. He is the inaugural Director of Policy, Governance Innovation & Impact of Project Liberty's Institute for responsible innovation and governance of data, infrastructures, and AI. There, he leads trailblazing global multistakeholder initiatives connecting governments, investors, IGOs, corporates, entrepreneurs, technologists, civil society, and universities spanning Stanford, Georgetown, MIT, Harvard, ETH Zurich, or Sciences Po for the USD 0.5B initiative.
Between 2012-2022, he co-founded and -led the Internet & Jurisdiction Policy Network, a groundbreaking global initiative for how laws apply to cross-border data flows and services. He scaled the organization that pioneered new approaches of multistakeholder collaboration from 0 to 1. It engaged 400+ key entities spanning governments, IGOs, the world's largest tech companies with a combined market cap of over USD 10T, civil society groups, and top universities across 70+ countries. The organization’s transformative impact was recognized through formal endorsements by the G7 Digital Ministers, United Nations, OECD, and EU. Paul’s comments on the future of the global digital economy, policy, and investment have been featured by The Economist, New York Times, Fortune, ImpactAlpha, Politico, Euronews or Die Zeit, as well as by the Council on Foreign Relations, Finland’s Innovation Fund Sitra, Mary Meeker's Internet Trends Report, or Oxford University Press.
As a leading voice at the nexus of policy and tech innovation, he is a frequent speaker and moderator in processes around the world, including the United Nations, OECD, EU, G7 process, FRAME of VentureESG, ImpactVC, KFW Capital, Web Summit's Collision, or the WTO. He has been appointed to advisory groups by the World Economic Forum, the Global Commission on Internet Governance, or the Freedom Online Coalition. Paul is also a Senior Fellow at the Hertie School of Governance and an alumnus of the Newton Venture Program of the London Business School and LocalGlobe VC. He holds a Master of International Relations degree from Sciences Po Paris, where he was awarded a scholarship from the German National Merit Foundation (Studienstiftung). Paul completed his BA in European Studies at Maastricht University.
