Alex Dehgan

Dr. Dehgan is the CEO and co-founder of Conservation X Labs, an innovation and technology startup focused ending the Sixth Mass Extinction.  Conservation X Labs both builds new technologies for addressing the underlying drivers of extinction, and harnesses open innovation & mass collaboration to attract new solvers and new solutions.  Through its programs, CXL has built the field of conservation technology, supporting over 145 innovators, from 70+ countries, on 6 continents, funded them to the tune of 12M since 2017, and helped them raise $550M in additional investment.  Alex is also a Professor of the Practice of Sustainability at Arizona State University at the Walton Institute for Planetary Health.

Alex previously served as the Chief Scientist at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), with rank of Assistant Administrator.  Alex founded and led the Office of Science and Technology (OST), and creating the vision for and helped stand up the Global Development Lab, the Agency’s DARPA for Development.  As the Agency’s first chief scientist in two decades, Dr. Dehgan implemented the President Obama’s promise to restore science to its rightful place within USAID. Alex was the architect of a number of new Agency institutions, including the Grand Challenges for Development program, Agency partnerships with universities (HESN) and federal science agencies (PEER), the independent office of science and technology (OST), the position of the Agency geographer and the GeoCenter, and data for development programs, and the Global Development Lab.  Alex was also part of the founding team for the Policy, Planning, & Learning Bureau (PPL) and helped author USAID’s Research, Scientific Integrity, and Biodiversity Policies. Alex rebuilt technical capabilities in the Agency by putting scientists, physicians, and engineers directly into USAID missions & bureaus, and led efforts for the Agency’s research policy, its biodiversity policy, and its first-ever scientific integrity policy.

Prior to USAID, Alex worked in multiple positions at the Dept. of State, including on the Policy Planning Staff and in the Office of the Secretary, and through overseas service under the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, using science to support bilateral diplomacy, including Arab-Israeli relations, engagement with Iran, through leading the science aspects of President Obama’s Cairo Initiative.

Alex was the founding country director of the Wildlife Conservation Society Afghanistan Program and helped create Afghanistan’s first national park.  Alex is the author of the book, The Snow Leopard Project, which describes the effort, which was selected by the journal Nature’s book editor as one of the top five science books of 2019, and won the Gold Medal of the Nautilus Book Prize in 2020.  

Alex holds a Ph.D in Evolutionary Biology from The University of Chicago and a J.D. from the University of California, Hastings College of the Law.  Alex has won multiple awards from the Departments of State and Defense, was named an Icon of Science, received the World Technology Award, and in 2020, was given the University of Chicago’s Medical and Biological Alumni Association’s highest honor.