Alex Dehgan

Dr. Alex Dehgan is the CEO and co-founder of Conservation X Labs, an innovation and technology startup focused on conservation. 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. Alex is also a Professor of the Practice of Sustainability and the Global Futures Fellow at Arizona State University. He 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. Alex was also part of the founding team of USAID’s Policy Bureau. Prior to USAID, Alex worked in multiple positions at the Dept. of State, including on the Policy Planning Staff 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. 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, as well as being named an Icon of Science, the World Technology Award, and in 2020, being given the University of Chicago’s Medical and Biological Alumni Association’s highest honor.