John Zoltner – Career Timeline (to scale)

In March 2025 I founded AIChildSafety.org, a US 501(c)(3) nonprofit, to build the institutional and advisory infrastructure the youth digital safety field needs at the intersection of AI governance, child rights, and developmental science.

2022 – 2025

Save the Children

Protecting children from digital harm at global scale

Global Lead, Protection from Digital Harm

Founded the Safe Digital Childhood initiative: 25,000+ staff across 118 countries.

I founded and directed Save the Children's global youth digital safety and wellbeing strategy, spanning program design, AI tool development, multi-stakeholder coordination, and policy advocacy, coordinated with the Tech Coalition, the WeProtect Global Alliance, and UN agencies. This was also where my AI product work and child protection expertise converged: the follow-on phase of a prototype grooming-detection classifier named to the IRCAI Global Top 100, and the Humanitarian Data Insights Platform with DataKind, Microsoft AI for Good, and the UN Humanitarian Data Exchange.

2018 – 2022

Save the Children

Technology for development, organization-wide

Senior Director, Technology for Development & Innovation

T4D team and strategy: 29 member organizations, 120 country offices, 100M+ children reached.

T4DGlobal strategy$4M+ raised

Humanitarian Data Insights Project (HDIP)

GenAI conversational interface for humanitarian data sharing, with DataKind, Microsoft AI for Good, and the UN's Humanitarian Data Exchange.

I established Save the Children's first Technology for Development practice and led cross-functional digital strategy across 29 member organizations and 120 country offices, supporting programs that reach more than 100 million children. The job was structural: mapping global business needs against available resources, creating a global T4D strategy with a theory of change and impact measurement frameworks, and leading a federation-wide, cross-functional strategic planning process that resulted in the creation of a centralized Digital Services team in London to coordinate technology investments across health, education, livelihoods, and child safety. I also conceived and product-managed a prototype grooming-detection classifier, built by a distributed team of AI engineers through Omdena and named to the IRCAI Global Top 100 in 2021.

2012 – 2018

Open Source Software Development and T4D Consulting Team

Founder & Director

Open-source technology unit serving programs in 60+ countries.

FounderOpen source$7M+ raised

Mobile Health Information Service

Mobile library of clinical data giving health workers reliable access to critical information at the point of care.

CHAI

Climate forecasts, advisories, and market prices for 120,000+ farmers in Uganda; cut crop loss by up to 65%; 2015 UNFCCC Momentum for Change Lighthouse Activities Award.

WISE

Electronic fish-market prices over 3G, mobile-money loans, and best-practice video for Senegal's fisheries (Qualcomm Wireless Reach).

At FHI 360 I founded and directed TechLab, a 13-person internal open-source software development and technology services unit serving projects in digital health, education, agriculture, democracy and governance, and economic development across more than 60 countries. I managed the unit's product managers and its seven-person team of software developers. TechLab built and shipped practical tools for hard environments: mobile data collection, interactive voice response, GIS mapping, and SMS advisory services. I raised more than $7 million in total from USAID, the Gates Foundation, Qualcomm, and corporate technology donors to fund the work.

2006 – 2012

Technology for social inclusion across Latin America

Founder & President · Santiago, Chile

Santiago-based social enterprise designing and managing innovative ICT-for-development projects.

ChileAward-winningAgTech

DatAgro

DataDyne's multiple award-winning SMS agricultural market and practices information for Chilean smallholder farmers; Knight News Challenge winner; ZCG was the local partner.

Salud Móvil / AIEPI Móvil

Mobile clinical protocols for integrated management of childhood illness, on basic phones.

Mobile Information Platform

PLATFORM

SMS messaging platform (DataDyne/Magpi); technical basis for DatAgro, cited in the World Bank ICT-in-Agriculture sourcebook.

Yo Agricultor

SMS prices, weather, and technical guidance for Chile's small farmers; training video library with 1M+ views (FIA, IDB).

RuralTICnova

CORFO InnovaChile project (2010–11) that grew DatAgro into a social-network platform for rural cooperatives: shared learning, group input purchasing, and joint market access across Cachapoal and Laja Diguillín.

I founded Zoltner Consulting Group in Santiago as a social enterprise using technology to promote social inclusion and human development across Latin America. Its best-known work was as the local partner on DatAgro, DataDyne's mobile and SMS market-information service that raised the productivity of Chilean smallholder farmers and cooperatives, built with a $325,000 Knight News Challenge grant. From 2009 to 2011 I was also Senior Vice President for Latin America and the Caribbean at DataDyne (now Magpi), where I product-managed the Mobile Information Platform that DatAgro ran on. Zoltner Consulting Group also ran a social enterprise providing low-cost refurbished computers to low-income families in Chile and managed municipal digital inclusion programs, including Chile's first WiMAX municipal backbone and its first community VoIP network.

2002 – 2006

Growing a national community technology network to eliminate the Digital Divide

Director, Development & Strategy

1,200+ community technology centers; $2M+ raised.

Digital divideDigital inclusion

Youth Visions for Stronger Neighborhoods

CTCNet's national youth media program: young people at community technology centers produced video and web projects to document and strengthen their neighborhoods, guided by a published six-month multimedia curriculum.

At CTCNet I led development and strategy for a national movement to close the digital divide: more than 1,200 community technology centers serving as neighborhood anchors for access, skills, and civic participation. I raised over $2 million, led nationwide advocacy for community technology funding, and co-founded the Telecenters of the Americas Partnership. Programs like Youth Visions for Stronger Neighborhoods put media tools in young people's hands to document and improve their own communities.

2000 – 2002

Growing the capacity of nonprofits to use technology to achieve their missions

Director, Strategic Alliances & Communications

At Technology Works for Good in Washington, DC, I directed strategy, partnerships, and communications for a nonprofit technology service provider whose mission was simple to say and hard to do: help nonprofits put technology to work for their missions.

1998 – 2000

Where it started: community technology and the digital divide

Community Technology Manager

My career began at the Community Preservation and Development Corporation in Washington, DC, in the dial-up era of Web 1.0, managing community technology programs in affordable housing. There I supervised creation of the first large-scale community intranet in affordable housing, a model that won awards from HUD, the Department of Commerce, and Microsoft.