Key Takeaways
- Ms. Jetter’s early fascination with building circuits from scavenged parts laid the foundation for a distinguished career in aerospace, robotics, and AI.
- After two decades at NASA, Boeing, Raytheon, and Amazon, she shifted focus to ensuring diverse voices shape artificial intelligence.
- She founded the nonprofit thinqueBytes to democratize AI and STEM education, delivering bite‑sized “bytes” that break complex topics into understandable lessons.
- thinqueBytes has trained over 1,000 young people across four continents, emphasizing that AI literacy should be a right, not a privilege.
- Ms. Jetter advocates for responsible AI governance, likening AI to a hammer that can build or harm depending on who wields it.
- Her participation in the UN’s inaugural Global Dialogue on AI Governance and the AI for Good Global Summit highlights her commitment to aligning technology with equitable, global solutions.
Early Inspirations and Education
Growing up in New Jersey, Ms. Jetter saved the quarters her grandfather gave her – not for sweets, but for batteries and light bulbs, so she could build circuits from whatever she found around the neighbourhood. Her father took her to the library for materials; her mother, a kindergarten and special education teacher, taught her how to explain complex ideas simply. This blend of hands‑on tinkering and clear communication sparked a lifelong curiosity that later propelled her to study mathematics and computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, specializing in planetary science, followed by a master’s in aeronautics and astronautics at Stanford.
A Distinguished Technical Career
Three decades later, that curious child had helped build the GPS satellite system much of the world now depends on, worked at NASA, Boeing and Raytheon, and held one of the highest technical positions at Amazon: senior principal technologist in robotics AI, a role reserved for only a handful of engineers worldwide. By any measure, she was at the top of her field, yet she began to sense a missing piece in the conversation about artificial intelligence.
The Turning Point: AI’s Societal Impact
“This moment in time is so important for the world because of how AI is shaping our society and how people are shaping AI,” she said. “If we do not have all the right voices in the room shaping artificial intelligence… the product we end up with will not be the best one for us as a global community.” This conviction became the catalyst for a dramatic career shift. Ms. Jetter decided her experience was better spent making sure no one was left out of the AI revolution.
Founding thinqueBytes: Education as a Right
That is how her non‑profit, thinqueBytes, was born – first as a personal project developed over five years, later as part of the Distinguished Minds Institute. Its mission is to expand access to artificial intelligence and STEM education among communities historically underserved by the tech sector. The approach is simple: break down complex subjects – AI, robotics, rocket science – into short videos, or “bytes”, each answering a basic question. “What is artificial intelligence? Should I be afraid of it? Will it take my job?” For Ms. Jetter, understanding emerging technology “should not be a privilege; it should be a right.”
Personal Experience Driving the Mission
Ms. Jetter attended an engineering school where, she said, “there were definitely more men than women”, and has experienced the bias of people resistant to a different reality — “and sometimes that different reality is simply brilliant people who deserve a place in this world.” This firsthand encounter with under‑representation fuels her drive to create inclusive learning opportunities that empower anyone, regardless of gender, geography, or socioeconomic background, to engage with AI.
AI Safety and Governance: A Hammer Analogy
Ms. Jetter is no naïve techno‑optimist. She likens AI to a hammer: “In the right hands, it builds a house, protects people and saves lives. In the hands of someone very different, it can be used to cause harm.” That is why she believes rules matter – not as an obstacle, but as a compass to help people understand when and how a product can cause harm. She observes that regulations are sometimes being written while we are building, often by people who lack the foundational knowledge to build responsibly.
Global Dialogue on AI Governance
In early July, that conviction collided with the global agenda. Ms. Jetter and her team joined the UN’s first Global Dialogue on AI Governance in Geneva, the first UN General Assembly‑established forum on AI with every country at the table. Opening the summit, Secretary‑General António Guterres said AI, used well and shared widely, could “compress decades of development into years” and become “the great equaliser of the twenty‑first century” — but warned the choice was to “govern by design or drift by default.” He noted that 2.2 billion people, one in four worldwide, remain disconnected from the digital world altogether.
AI for Good Global Summit: Concrete Applications
Days later, at the AI for Good Global Summit, where Ms. Jetter also spoke, the conversation turned concrete — AI for early cancer detection, internet access for remote schools, and critical‑thinking skills for a generation growing up talking to machines. Ms. Jetter could return to her old career at any time. Instead, somewhere in a classroom in Ghana, or on a screen anywhere in the world, someone who never imagined understanding an algorithm is learning about one — because an engineer decided AI’s future should be written in classrooms, not only in corporate labs.
Closing Reflection: From Circuits to Classrooms
Ms. Jetter’s journey from salvaging quarters for batteries to shaping global AI policy illustrates a profound belief: technology’s true power lies not in its sophistication alone, but in the diversity of minds that guide it. By turning complex concepts into digestible “bytes” and advocating for inclusive governance, she ensures that the next generation of innovators can build a future where AI serves everyone, not just the privileged few.
https://news.un.org/en/story/2026/07/1167920