Diana Nalyvanna worked on international development projects in Ukraine and later served as a diplomat in Turkmenistan. In those roles, she saw how differently governments operate, and how much those differences shape people’s daily lives. As a School of Public Policy graduate student, Nalyvanna is turning that experience toward questions about technology and governance, with a focus on how artificial intelligence is changing who makes decisions and how those decisions take shape in public policy settings.
Her interest in public policy grew out of studying international relations, which revealed not just how governments function, but how deeply their decisions affect societies. This curiosity led to international development work in her home country of Ukraine, where she observed the crucial role civil society plays in connecting governments and the people they serve. Later, while serving as a diplomat for the Ukrainian government in Turkmenistan, she saw a different reality: without a strong civil society presence, opportunities for public input and accountability were far more limited.
Those experiences continue to shape how she approaches policy questions. Rather than looking at individual decisions in isolation, she pays close attention to how institutions, communities and incentives interact, and what those interactions produce, particularly as new technologies like AI become embedded in public life.
That perspective eventually led her to technology policy. Nalyvanna notes Ukraine’s digital government rollout as sparking her initial interest. The system made essential documents accessible by smartphone, cutting through bureaucracy and long wait times. But beyond efficiency, she saw how digital tools could change transparency, accessibility in public service delivery and built trust in everyday interactions between people and their government.
Then came the rapid rise of artificial intelligence. Watching AI evolve in real time felt, to Nalyvanna, like the early days of the internet, but faster and with broader consequences. In just a few years, AI has become embedded across sectors, raising new questions about how decisions are made and who shapes them.
For Nalyvanna, AI is not just a technical issue. “AI, its impact and risks are not engineering problems,” she said. “They are questions about power, accountability and whose interests are prioritized, exactly the issues that policy training is designed to address.”
That perspective shapes her work. Through her independent study on AI policy with Associate Research Professor Charles Harry, she is examining the challenges of governing AI, approaching it as a “system of systems” intertwined with security, ethics and global governance. “Working with Professor Harry pushed me to see how deeply AI is embedded across policy areas and how quickly it’s evolving,” said Nalyvanna. “Government is often struggling to keep pace.”
The work builds on the broader realization that as technologies become more embedded in public life, policy decisions about them carry wider and less predictable consequences. Looking ahead, Nalyvanna hopes to play a role in shaping technology policy that is forward-thinking and grounded in public interest, with an emphasis on international coordination and governance and responding to how quickly AI is reshaping policy decisions across sectors.
