Building Technology With Communities
Nagela Nukuna has built her career on a simple, defining observation: the people most affected by a problem are usually the ones closest to its solution, yet they are rarely the ones asked to help build it. Her work is predicated on bridging this gap, ensuring that communities are at the center of technological change.
Leading Deliberate Transformation
As the Executive Director of AI Business Strategy at College Board, Nagela leads AI adoption, enterprise governance, and workforce transformation across one of the country’s most consequential educational institutions, impacting millions of students at critical moments in their lives. Her work ensures the organization makes deliberate, accountable decisions about how AI reshapes the way people learn, work, and are evaluated.
Bridging Three Distinct Worlds
Her career has moved purposefully across the private sector, federal government, and nonprofit spaces. Before the College Board, Nagela shaped technology modernization in the U.S. Digital Service and served as a Senior Advisor for Technology and Delivery at the White House Domestic Policy Council. There, working on critical public services like COVID-19 data infrastructure and systems for asylum seekers, she learned what it truly means to build for people at critical moments and the accountability required when systems fall short. Prior to her federal service, she did product and policy work at Google and Netflix, building technology at consumer scale.
A Systems Approach to Human Problems
Trained as an Industrial Engineer, Nagela approaches complex organizations as systems: assessing constraints, redesigning workflows, and measuring key markers that matter for the people the work is meant to serve. In this vein, she also recognizes that as AI accelerates the structural shift in how we work, human connection and trust become our most essential assets.
Growing up navigating the shift from an analog to a technology-dominated world uniquely shapes how she thinks about AI governance, public trust, and what responsible innovation actually looks like in practice.
Education & Advocacy
Nagela holds a B.S. in Industrial Engineering from Georgia Tech, an MBA from MIT Sloan, and a Master in Public Policy from Harvard Kennedy School. Beyond her executive role, she is a passionate advocate for mentorship, cultural preservation, and using technology to fundamentally expand access.
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