Juliette Powell is an American-Canadian media expert, tech ethicist, business advisor, author and beauty pageant titleholder who was crowned Miss Canada 1989, the contest's first Black Canadian winner.[1][2] Her early career in media and entertainment dovetailed with her work to break racial barriers, growing into a technology and society advisory practice. Juliette advises multinational companies and organizations, advocating for ethical technology use.
Early life
Powell was born in Manhattan, New York in 1971 and moved to Montreal, Quebec with her French-Canadian mother at the age of eight.[3] In high school she excelled in math and science courses and swam twice a week, and has stated she saw herself as a shy and unpopular student.[4]
Her time in the world of beauty pageants began with her outrage when she heard a rumour that the second place winner of the Miss Montreal pageant had scored higher than the first-place winner, but the judges had not accepted her as the winner because she was black.[4] She has stated that she did not want to be a beauty queen but wanted to prove a point when she entered the Miss Montreal pageant herself, later entering and ultimately winning the 1989 Miss Canada Pageant.[4] During this time she also studied Commerce at Vanier College, graduating in 1992.[3]
In 2001, she co-authored the media section for the UN Plan of Action of the World Conference against Racism. This began an ongoing advisory role with international institutions that grew to include the United Nations, World Economic Forum, and the World Bank, among others.[7] In 2011, she began working with the E-G8, an extension of the G8 Summit, created to inform G8 leaders on the future of the internet and connected society.[8]
Powell's writing first gained notoriety with her 2009 book 33 Million People in the Room: How to Create, Influence and Run a Successful Business using Social Networking (Financial Times Press, ISBN978-0-13-715435-7).[9] Her early publications on the business applications of social media were translated into Chinese, Korean, German, Portuguese and Spanish.
Powell later translated her Canadian degree into a US-recognized degree, graduating from Columbia Universitysumma cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology and Phi Beta Kappa membership.[6] Her thesis research, “The Limits and Possibilities in the Self-Regulation of Artificial Intelligence,” drew on her consulting for Intel Labs and other multinational companies and later served as the foundation of her book The AI Dilema.
In 2021 Juliette joined the Faculty of New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program, teaching courses at the intersection of media, technology, and ethics.