Kevin O’Neil is the Managing Director of New Frontiers at The Rockefeller Foundation, a team focused on discovering and scaling impactful solutions to global problems through research, convenings, and catalytic grantmaking. Currently, the team is focused on advancing work around democracy innovations, collective wellbeing, and the social and economic impacts of artificial intelligence – after previously successful initiatives launched around digital public infrastructure, access to the social safety net, housing insecurity, and more.
Originally joining the Foundation in 2014, Kevin previously led a team focused on researching and developing new initiatives with the goal of providing evidence for major strategic decisions across the Foundation’s portfolio.
He previously worked as a research and teaching fellow at the University of Cape Town, a fellow of the Thomas J. Watson Foundation, and an analyst at the Migration Policy Institute. He has also served as a firefighter on four continents.
Kevin holds a PhD in Population Science and Public Affairs from Princeton University and a BA in Economics from Swarthmore College. He is based in The Rockefeller Foundation’s Washington DC office and lives in Baltimore, Maryland.
Feb 16 2023 Perspective Developing Country Voices and the Global Climate Agenda: Unlocking Lessons for Action One of the most important messages from last year’s COP27 global climate summit was voiced by leaders from emerging markets and developing economies (EMDEs). They made it clear that time was a luxury their countries did not have. Climate change was affecting their people now, they said, and global action to respond to the issues […]
Jul 22 2021 Perspective Co-developing Digital Public Infrastructure for an Equitable Recovery As Covid-19 spread across the world last year, its impacts were fast and society-wide, ravaging health and livelihoods alike. The question quickly became: How can our societies respond with equivalent speed, scale, and breadth? Digital systems played a key role in this response. Sri Lanka, for example, built and deployed a real-time Covid-19 screening, contact […]