Leveraging Science and Technology to Confront Social Challenges: A Conversation with Tom Kalil

Spotlight spoke with Tom Kalil, Chief Innovation Officer at Schmidt Futures, about his work harnessing science and technology to address societal challenges like poverty. Kalil served in the Clinton and Obama administrations, helping to design and launch national science and technology initiatives. In doing so, he found that the agencies responsible for addressing issues like economic mobility, such as the Department of Labor, lack capacity and funding for research. “I think that if you are trying to make progress on a particular societal problem and are generating a list of approaches to explore,” Kalil says, “science and technology should be on the list.”