Karina Rios Michel

Exploration question

How might we design AI systems that support human dignity, emotional wellbeing, and collective agency, particularly for young people living in contexts shaped by inequality, uncertainty, and rapid technological change?

Karina is the Chief Creative & Technology Officer at Girl Effect, where she leads the organisation’s work at the intersection of AI, storytelling, and youth-centred digital innovation across Africa and Asia. Over the past fifteen years, she has designed behaviour-change products focused on mental health, sexual and reproductive health, gender equity, and youth wellbeing in low-resource settings.

Karina’s work explores how emerging technologies, particularly generative AI, can expand access to trusted support while remaining grounded in ethics, safeguarding, and cultural nuance. She is especially interested in designing systems that feel emotionally resonant, accessible, and human, even at scale.

Outside of work, Karina is deeply shaped by her identity as a first-generation Mexican American and Pueblo Indigenous woman, and by a lifelong curiosity about storytelling, creativity, healing, and how people imagine better futures for themselves and their communities.