Elham Tabassi is Director of the Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Technology Initiative and a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. She previously served as Chief AI Advisor at NIST, where she led development of the landmark AI Risk Management Framework. Recognized on the TIME100 list of the most influential people in AI, she contributes to national and international discussions on trustworthy, human-centered AI. Her work focuses on narrowing the gap between rapidly advancing AI capabilities, system reliability, and organizational governance. She develops practical frameworks that embed risk assessment across the full AI lifecycle — from chip design and compute infrastructure through data collection, model development, and deployment — helping institutions strengthen accountability while supporting responsible innovation.