Raffi believes that when technology is used both strategically and intentionally, it
has the power to impact people’s lives ? and the world ? for the better. This belief has
guided him throughout his career as an engineer and tech leader, and drives his work
enabling technological innovation across and beyond Emerson Collective.
Over the past decades, Raffi has helped companies and organizations build teams
and tech infrastructure designed for impact. He was an executive at X (formerly Twitter) running a
global engineering team focused on making X available and performant for the
world. At Uber, he helped start and run the self-driving efforts tasked with building
and deploying the first-ever self-driving and passenger carrying fleet in record time.
His experiences at these industry- and world- changing companies gave him deep
insight into the importance of thoughtful design and implementation within the
social media, artificial intelligence, and commercial landscapes.
When Trump was elected in 2016, Raffi pivoted to put his technological know-how to
use in the political realm. He joined the Democratic National Committee, as their
first-ever Chief Technology Officer, to create a unique team fused with campaign and
industry veterans, to secure the party after its breach by Russian state actors in the
last presidential election, and to entirely revamp its tech infrastructure ? all to
enable Democrats to win the next few elections.
Over his four years at Emerson Collective, Raffi has brought his unique ability to
harness tech talent to the social sector. He works across all teams ? and with
Emerson partners ? to consider data, tools, and product design with the aim of
empowering them to achieve their goals, and making EC a truly data-curious
organization along the way.
Raffi is also the host of the Technically Optimistic podcast where he explores the
intersection of technology with our society. He's had actors, senators, congress
people, civil society directors, a nobel laureate, and industry professionals as guests.
In its inaugural season, Technically Optimistic ranked #2 on Apple Podcasts
technology list while reaching tens of thousands of unique listeners on the release
day of each episode. Technically Optimistic is now also available as a Substack
newsletter while Season 2 of the podcast is in production for release in early 2024.
Raffi is a graduate of M.I.T. He currently serves on numerous boards including TUMO,
an Armenia-based organization focused on bringing cutting edge STEAM education,
through an innovative free after-school program, to 50,000 kids in centers in
Armenia, Lebanon, France, Switzerland, Germany, Ukraine, Albania, and others; the
Community Tech Alliance, who works to break the cycle of time-intensive patchwork
solutions that get rebuilt by progressive organizations election cycle to cycle; and
Medic, a nonprofit organization founded to improve health and health outcomes in
the world’s hardest-to-reach communities.