Kayla Zhu is a humanitarian professional and former UN aid worker specializing in migration, governance, and crisis response. She most recently served with the International Organization for Migration in Afghanistan as the mission’s donor reporting lead, overseeing impact reporting for one of the agency’s largest global humanitarian portfolios. In this role, she advised on program design and assessed digital risks to support donor operations in Afghanistan’s post-Taliban takeover humanitarian context. She also worked on the emergency response in Somalia with the Agency for Technical Cooperation and Development (ACTED), and in New York and Washington on policy, strategy, and innovation across migration, accountability, and technology governance.

She holds an MPhil in Development Studies from the University of Cambridge and dual BAs from Columbia University and Sciences Po Paris, graduating summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Columbia. She is passionate about reimagining how emerging technologies can be scaled to support vulnerable populations and strengthen humanitarian systems and development outcomes in fragile contexts.