Nicole Shanahan is a California based attorney and the founder and president of Bia-Echo Foundation, a private foundation that aims to invest in changemakers at the forefront of innovation who are tackling some of the world’s greatest challenges: reproductive longevity & equality, criminal justice reform and a healthy & livable planet. Initial investments and projects led by Bia-Echo include the launch of the world’s first Center for Reproductive Longevity and Equality at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging and the Stanford Computational Policy Lab to drive social impact on criminal justice reform via data analysis and technical innovation. Prior to launching Bia-Echo, Nicole supported these efforts through the Sergey Brin Family Foundation.

Prior to shifting focus to philanthropic efforts, Nicole founded ClearAccessIP (now part of IPWe, Inc.), an integrated patent management company using AI to help the creators and owners of IP assets effectively develop, manage and transact patent-protected technology. She is also an academic fellow of CodeX, the Stanford Center of Legal Informatics, a joint center between Stanford Law School and Computer Science, where she launched the Smart Prosecution project, a multi-disciplinary effort applying data science to the prosecutorial process, involving partnerships with district attorneys and community organizations. Apart from the practical applications of legal technology, her academic research centers around Ronald Coase’s work on transaction cost theory. Entitled, “Coasean Mapping,” she theorizes on the pace and nature of society’s adoption of artificial intelligence for law and government.