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Shireen Santosham leads Strategic Initiatives at Plenty, a vertical farming company. In her role, she oversees strategic operations, ESG, government, and community initiatives and programs.

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Previously, she was the Chief Innovation Officer for the mayor of San Jose where she was the visionary behind the San Jose Digital Inclusion Fund. The program helped expand 5G technology within the city and close the digital divide for 100,000 San Jose residents. Her Smart City Vision initiative also championed autonomous vehicle pilots, a city-wide privacy policy, and user-friendly government.  

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She has launched innovative initiatives across sectors throughout her career, including advocating closing the gender digital divide internationally at GSMA, launching the Center for Government while at McKinsey & Company, securing $50M to combat global overfishing while at Oceana, and setting up the Allen Institute for Brain Science while an investor at Vulcan Capital.

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Shireen received numerous awards for her work, including a Silver Stevie Award for Female Executive of the Year, twice named to GovTech’s List of 25 Doers, Dreamers, and Drivers and featured in publications like the New York Times, Bloomberg Technology, KQED, and Ars Technica. She holds an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School, an M.P.A in International Development from Harvard Kennedy School, and a B.S. and B.A. with honors from the University of Pennsylvania.